Category: monstergirl

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It had been a fair amount of time since I had been on earth, and seeing the vast fields, the oceans, and the mountains, I realized how little I cared. The last time I had been here was when Gaston was born and we had gone to silent hill.

Bea squeezed my hand.

==YOU OKAY?==

I nodded as I watched the interstate stretch on before us. “Lot of ghosts here.”

==I PACKED THE MUON TRAP==

“That’s not what I…” I stopped. Bea blinked hopefully. “…good,” I said.

==SPEAKING OF GHOSTS, ABOUT YOUR FATHER…==

I shuddered, and the car swerved slightly as my hand twitched on the wheel. “I’m sorry hun, but that was really, really not good,” I said, recalling the translucent face of my father’s spirit, eyeless and screaming as his sheet-like form wavered.

Bea hugged my arm tightly.

==I JUST WANTED TO HELP.==

“I know sweetie. I’m not mad.”

==SO WHAT CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT YOUR MOM? WHAT DID MAGNUS KNOW?==

I thought back to the stream of visions which filled my head as I digested chunks of pozzed brain, of the fleeting glimpses of Gaston and Reismarch, and words overheard by my vanquished feast but not understood.

“He knew nothing, of course. But he had heard enough bits and pieces about our sons that I could cobble together what had happened,” I said. “We need to stop it.”

==YOU SAID THAT AND ITS CRYPTIC AND I APPRECIATE THAT, BUT I’M CURIOUS WHAT YOU MEANT.==

I swallowed, trying to think of how to phrase it. Bea bounced impatiently, and I permitted myself the guilty pleasure of enjoying her jiggling body.

==WHAT? DO THEY GET HURT? KILLED?==

I took a deep breath, knowing Bea wouldn’t like what I said.

“They… chose mates poorly,” I said.

Bea looked horrified. A hand went to her mouth.

==NO…==

“I’m afraid so. Gaston becomes obsessed with a snobby French girl who thinks women can do things,” I said with disdain. “Reismarch’s is even worse.”

Bea’s eyes narrowed.

==WHERE ARE THESE WOMEN?==

“They aren’t born yet.”

==OKAY, SO…WE HIT THE PARENTS, THEN?==

“That’s the first part of my plan,” I responded. “We’ll start with-“

There was a flash of light a half-mile up the road, and a half circle hung in the air, the unmistakeable sign of a tear in space. Within the free-floating hole was the prismatic chaos of time travel, and from this disorder two humanoid shapes emerged, falling as though dropped by a hovering craft.

The larger was sized like a dump truck, clad in a red shirt and brown leggings, while the other was tall and twisted like a leafless tree. Gaston I recognized by his excellent chin, which I could see even from the distance. He he had grown into a perfect specimen. A blunderbuss rested on his shoulder, a hand-cannon I gauged could knock an elephant off its feet with a head-on strike. Next to him was a shadow figure, in a long dark purple robe, two red eyes lit dimply beneath his silver-trimmed hood. He hovered slightly in the air, holding a truncheon whose end glowed with a green fire that made no smoke. I did not know him by appearance, but it was not hard to deduce who it was.

I stopped the car and looked at Bea, who was squinting at the two figures. I dusted off my Hastur memories.

“Gee,” I said. “I wonder why they are here.”

==YOU CAN FOCUS ON THE DOWNSIDES, BUT IT’S NICE OF THE BOYS TO DROP IN. AFTER WE FIGHT MAYBE WE CAN GET DINNER.==

“If we do, we’re paying,” I said. I slammed my car door and walked around to the other side to let Bea out, taking her hand. Her belly had grown large and swollen with child. I had half a mind to tell her to wait in the car, but I knew she wouldn’t.

“Father,” Gaston said with a bow as we approached. “Mother.”

“Son…” I said. I looked to Reismarch. “And…other son. You think this is a good way to introduce yourself to your mother and me?”

“How my introduction goes is entirely dependent on you. Do not continue this quest, Father,” the hooded figure whispered. “Or we shall fight you. If you relent…we can go get dinner.”

“We are prepared to fight to death otherwise,” Gaston said.

==AREN’T WE FORGETTING SOMETHING?==

Gaston and Reismarch looked at each other and sighed. Hugs and kisses went all around.

==NOW, ENOUGH OF THIS FOOLISHNESS. MOMMY AND DADDY HAVE WORK TO DO.==

“Yes, you need to to home,” Reismarch said. “Raise your children.”

==WE ARE RAISING THEM. RIGHT NOW WE ARE REMOVING THREATS.==

“Belle will be mine, mother,” Gaston said through clenched teeth. “She is the prettiest girl in the village and I shall have her!”

Bea looked at me.

==HE MAKES A GOOD CASE.==

“She cucks him with a furry,” I said dryly.

Gaston clenched his teeth. “I am not cucked! I’ll kill that damned beast…”

“He knocked you off a cliff.”

“I lost my footing,” Gaston said. “Not my finest hour, I’ll admit…”

“A problem that can be rectified, father,” Reismarch said. “Gaston can kill the Beast as he has killed thousands of others, as Eileen showed him.”

“And this Belle will still connive against him,” I said. “But would that it were that simple for you…the viper that you nuzzle to your chest at night…”

“Tammy is not a viper,” Reismarch growled. He clutched his truncheon in two hands.

“I saw the videos. Or rather, Magnus did. She’s horrid, Reismarch. She is unfaithful to you. She has commune with freaks and painted dogs. She doesn’t love you.”

“Lies,” Reismarch said. “We’ve had our problems, and she’s strayed, but…”

“Strayed? You were dating when she made those videos.”

“No…we had broken up temporarily, and…”

“She laughed at you in them.”

“NO!” Reismarch shouted, launching a green bolt of lightning at me from his truncheon with a wild swing. I barely dodged the strike, and down the road our car flipped in the air and exploded. Tendrils sprang up from the grounds as Bea’s eyes flooded with unnatural light. The sky began to darken.

The battle began.

Three days had passed when it finally ended. I looked over the scorched craters and field of ash, rubbing at my shoulder and idly pulling out the buckshot. It stung like hell, and looking down at where Gaston had done a Visceral on me I could see my stomach puffing through a bloody hole.

I tugged out my last Sunny D and drank, watching as my flesh reknit and organs receded.

In the distant skyline of the abandoned city, a skyscraper rumbled and collapsed, the victim of an errant shot. Several torched tanks and crashed planes littered the ground, as at around day two the authorities had tried to stop the reality warping destruction.

Bea was licking a cloth and wiping blood off of Gaston’s face, who looked tired and annoyed. Reismarch sat near him with his arms crossed, a bandage over his eye.

“I’m disappointed in both of you,” I said, shaking my head.

“Not half as disappointed as we are,” Reismarch replied.

“Your mother is pregnant. What if you had hurt the baby?”

Gaston rolled his eyes. “They’re resilient,” he said.

==IT WAS JUST HIGH SPIRITS HUN, IT’S FINE.==

Bea poured over them both looking for wounds, her brow furrowed. She put her hand on Reismarch’s face.

“You grew up to be such a beautiful boys,” she said sweetly, in indoor voice. “Both of you. And you put up a hell of a fight. I’m proud of you.”

My sons couldn’t help but straighten their shoulders and puff out their chests.

“Proud?” I asked. “They killed one of your tentacles.”

I pointed at the tentacle, which lay dead on the ground. The other tentacles were gathered around, nuzzling it and whining.

==THAT ONE…IT WAS GETTING OLD, ANYWAY…==

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Gaston said. “We just- we were fighting…”

“It’s our mates,” Reismarch said. “you can’t expect us to just let you kill them.”

“Honor thy father and thy mother. You’re both morons and you chose mates poorly,” I said.

“Belle is-” Gaston began.

“She’s trash,” I said. I looked at Reismarch. “What is your opinion of Belle?”

Reismarch shook his head. “Oh no, Dad. I know your mind. You seek to divide us, as you always have, to weaken us. It’s not going to work.”

“Of course not,” Gaston said. “What’s to divide? Reismarch would have to acknowledge that Belle is best waifu.”

“Best?” Reismarch said. “Best? Your waifu a shit, brother.”

Gaston rolled his eyes. “And your lesbian is any better?”

“Tammy’s not a lesbian!” Reismarch snapped. “She is smart. Independent. Her own woman.”

“That isn’t a plus,” I said.

“What? Mom’s independent,” he said.

Bea slapped him.

==DON’T YOU DARE SAY THAT. IF YOUR GIRL DOESN’T DEPEND ON YOU, SHE WILL BETRAY YOU.==

“Alright, you two have made your positions clear,” I said. “And in the interests of familial love and harmony, I shall heed you. Both of you go back to your own time. You have my pledge we won’t kill your waifus. but…

“But what?” Gaston asked, his eyes narrowed.

“You shall not interfere in our plans ever again,” I said.

“You will forbid us from seeing them when we come of age, won’t you?” Reismarch said.

“I will do no such thing,” I said. “I will…endeavor to adjust you in other ways. Do we have a deal?”

Gaston and Reismarch looked at each other. Reismarch nodded slowly.

“We do,” Gaston said. “God help us for trusting you.”

“Gaston, that hurts,” I said, chuckling to myself.

The only place left within twenty miles was an Applebee’s. I was never a huge fan but whatever. The boys were well-behaved which was nice and we got dessert.

When we finished up inside, we exchanged hugs in the parking lot and they departed through a shimmering time disorder. Bea and I got into our car. For having been flipped and incinerated, it ran surprisingly well, although I had to pour two quarts of oil in it every time I gassed it up.

Bea sat in her seat, her hand on her very pregnant belly, and looked over at me.

==SO ARE WE CRAWFISHING? KILLING THE PARENTS ANYWAY?==

“No, no,” I said. “We’ll honor our agreement. Killing the women was never the best solution. It ignored the true problem.”

==THAT THEY DON’T LIKE MONSTERGIRLS?==

“More or less. Our children have had no normal human women in their lives.”

==WHAT ABOUT EILEEN?==

“She’s a hoonter of hoonters. Normal women are an Outside Context Problem for Gaston and Reismarch. They have no meaningful metric – even a bad one – to gauge their behavior. Like it or lump it, my mother is a normal human woman and the only one they’ll potentially interact with. They need her presence in their lives to calibrate a normal human woman’s behavior.”

After a few hours of driving we were back in my old hometown. We drove past the high school and took the turn down the winding driveway that lead to my childhood home. The landscape was immaculate as usual, leading up to a white mansion from the late nineteenth century, one owned by one of the Hearst family before it fell into my parents’ hands. This place, forever and in spite of what I wished, would always be Home. The thought made my skin crawl.

As we exited the car Bea looked at the landscape with a satisfied nod, impressed but not intimidated.

==YOUR MOM DID PRETTY WELL.==

“She’s the editor of a fashion magazine,” I said. “It’s long hours and lots of meetings. She’s done it for years. And of course she also got everything when Dad off’ed himself.”

I clenched my jaw at the thought and felt lightning coarse through my hand.

I felt the warm tender touch of my wife squeeze down on me. Her touch soothed me, and the lightning dissipated.

==REMEMBER WHY WE’RE HERE.==

I took a deep breath. “I’ll be good,” I whispered.

I rasped at the gold door knocker four times, waiting for some kind of noise. I heard stirring within, and half expected some squat Aztec maid or male Swedish fitness trainer to answer the door.

Instead I was confronted by my mother, who gasped as loudly as I did. Despite it being 2pm, she was in a dark blue bathrobe, her dyed black hair wet, her eyes bloodshot. Her frame was thin as always. In her right hand she had a martini glass with a cloudy liquid that wasn’t water, and between her index and middle fingers a lit cigarette put smoke into the air.

Her lips were thick with collagen and smeared with bright red lipstick. She wobbled a little, her eyes a little glassy. She had fewer wrinkles now than when I had last seen her, and I wondered how much botox was in her forehead or how much the skin of her neck had been stretched.

For a split second her eyes widened,
and there was a mixture of a smile and a grimace on her face. But her eyes quickly lidded and she stared with her mouth slightly slack.

“Oh. It’s you,” she said, her deep voice scratchy from the decades of inhaling smoke.

“Hi M-m…” I began. The word formed in my throat, but I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t call her that.

In that long moment, we all knew what I was debating to say. But it went unsaid and there was only silence.

“What’s it been, eight years?” My mother said at last.

“Four,” I said.

“Huh. Felt like eight,” she said, taking a sip of her drink and a puff. She glanced at Bea and her belly and exhaled smoke slowly away from her. “So it’s clear why you both are here. You wouldn’t come all this way to borrow a coat hanger…”

==WE DON’T MURDER CHILDREN IN THE WOMB. SOMETIMES DADDY NEEDS TO EAT THEM AFTERWARD.==

My mother grabbed at her temples. “I’ll um, keep that in mind. Can you lower the volume on the…mind rape thing, doll?”

“I wanted you to meet my fiance,” I said. “This is Bea…”

“A goat girl? Again? I shoulda named you Ahmed…”

“Goats are best. And Bea is best goat,” I said, matter of factly.

Bea squeezed my hand tucked her head against my shoulder. I smiled.

“She ain’t one of them fainting ones is she? These are hardwood floors…”

==I’M THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG.==

My mother stared at Bea with narrow eyes.

“Is that…is that from something?”

==SORT OF. I WOULD VENTURE THAT I’M STEADIER ON MY FEET THAN AT LEAST ONE OTHER PERSON HERE.==

My mother laughed curtly, and the air filled with the smell of fruit and paint thinner. “Cute. I’ll have you know I can walk a pretty damn straight line. So you need cash cause you knocked her up, or what?”

“No,” I said.

==HE’S IN THE FIRM OF SULTAN, LOUDON, AUBERGE AND DERCETO. HE MAKES A MINT.==

“Never heard of them. What do they do?”

I cleared my throat. “We deal in real estate,” I said, taking my best guess.

“Huh. Well good for you. When you left it was to go do those porn movies for the women with pussies in their tails.”

“It was a call center job,” I responded. “Talking to monster girls.”

“Whatever. So why’d you come? To showoff how well things are going? I’m doing great myself…”

She looked over her shoulder.

“Hey Paolo, get your brown ass out here!”

An hispanic male probably five or six years younger than me (my Human body anyways) came out of the back rooms in an orange shirt and brown shorts. He took one look at me and trembled like a leaf. He stared down at the ground.

“Well, Anon, meet your new Daddy!” My mother said. “Paolo, say hi!”

Paolo kept his eyes downcast and mumbled something.

“Paolo and I met a few months ago. I woke up next to him and his brothers in a Home Depot parking lot after New Year’s,” my mother smacked Bea lightly in the bust with her free hand. “Be honest sweetie; if my son hadn’t knocked you up, you’d have loved to get a piece of that!”

Bea squinted. She grabbed Paolo by the waistband of his shorts and pulled them open.

==YOUR SON IS BIGGER.==

My mother laughed. “Paolo, go clean the pool out. I think one of your extra small condoms wound up in the filter.”

Paolo hastened off, going the wrong way into the kitchen as opposed to toward the back door.

My mother shook her head. “I dunno. He’s got good abs. It’s the motion in the ocean they say,” she pointed at me. “His Dad was lousy at sex. Actually started going soft near the end. Tried to claim once it was because I used to yell at him,” she shook her head and the liquid in the glass disappeared in one gulp. “What a wuss.”

“Dad wasn’t a wuss,” I growled. “You were cruel to him.”

“He was a whiner,” my mother continued. “Always with the weeping: ‘Oh Margie, my Mom died, Oh Margie, my brother died two days later a bloo bloo’. Big fucking deal. My parents both died on the same day. I finished work and left for a scheduled trip to Paris, sent flowers to the funerals. Didn’t even bat an eyelash let alone emit tears.”

==DID YOU NOT LIKE YOUR PARENTS?==

“You kidding? A girl never had better parents. But I had a job to do. Food to put on the table. Clothes to hang on emaciated walking coatracks. Just because your family dies is no reason to cry like a fucking faggot.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Crying is something that Humans do,” I said.

“And look how much most Humans suck,” my mother said, taking a drink. “You were always sentimental like your father.”

“And Ted took after you,” I said. “Sadly only he’s in jail.”

“Well if you hate me so much, why are you here?”

I took a deep breath. I debated some roundabout statement about Gaston and Reismarch, but suddenly the real reason blurted out.

“Because I…I want to know. I want to know if you ever cared.”

My mother stared at me silently.

“Cared about what?”

“Us. Me. Dad…”

“Your father was always blabbing about this shit,” she said. My mother wobbled over to her liquor cabinet and grabbed up a light blue bottle, pouring the contents into her glass. “You want motherly advice? Go take your wife and have this kid. Work hard and realize life is hard. Nobody is gonna hold your hand.”

I sighed.

“Then I guess there is no more to discuss,” I said quietly. I felt the dark side rising strong in me. The rage. The hate. I could do it. Turn her into a lightning display the Vice President would be proud of. But I decided against it. It was my mother.

“Come on, Bea…” I said.

My mother took a sip. “I think maybe that’s for the best.”

Bea gently grasped my arm.

==WAIT.==

She looked at my mother.

==YOU WOULD RATHER HAVE YOUR SON HATE YOU FOREVER THAN SHOW WEAKNESS IN FRONT OF HIM?==

“Weakness? There’s no weakness. What happened was not my fault. His Dad-“

==DO YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT IT? ABOUT YOUR ROLE IN IT?==

“You damn people with your feelings,” my mother said. “Haven’t you figured out that if you drink enough alcohol it kills that shit?”

==YOU THINK YOU LOOK STRONG, WOBBLING THROUGH THIS HOUSE IN A STUPOR WITH YOUR MICROPENIS SEX WORKER? YOU WANT THIS TO BE THE WAY YOUR SON REMEMBERS YOU?==

My mother shook her head. “We’re done here,” she said, walking away. “Show yourselves out.”

A tendril burst through the floor and hissed at her. She froze in her tracks.

“Well…so much for clean underwear,” my mother said dryly. She looked at me. “You had to get involved with the damned Eldritch.”

==YOU ARE GOING TO FACE THIS. YOU NEVER HAVE AND IT IS UNJUST.==

“So are you going to kill me?” My mother asked.

==NO. YOUR SON WAS ABOUT TO JUST NOW BUT HE STOPPED HIMSELF.==

My mother stared at me with wide eyes.

“You…want to kill me?”

The question seemed to be one of honest, oblivious horror.

“M-maybe you should just do it, then,” she said. “Show some balls for once.”

==YOU’D LIKE HIM TO DO IT. RATHER THAN TAKK TO HIM.==

I narrowed my eyes. I thought of accessing Hastur’s memories, but the mere implication terrified me. I knew what he…I…would do.

“Would it be so bad?” I asked out loud. “After all, it would be just after what you did to my father.”

“What I did…” my mother said shaking her head. “You think I wanted him to die? That I filed for divorce to kill him?”

I shrugged. “Well of course. You hated him. Used him, cheated on him, discarded him, and took all his money when he killed himself. And now you bring your parade of small penis’ed gigolos into his home and fuck them in his bed.”

I expected her to rage at me, fling a glass or attack me. Or worse, laugh at me. Call me weak. Confirm it all. I would have killed her in a split second. Torched her corpse and her dwarf penis manservant for good measure. Instead, she shook her head. “No…” she whispered.

“Your father…” my mother began, sitting in one of her uncomfortable hallway chairs. The gravel was gone from her voice. “He was a bright man. Gentle. He needed someone strong and tough. He was too sentimental…”

“It was hard to be what he needed. The toughness came easy. He liked it. He liked when I ran the roost, when I ran the bedroom. And I ran it well for him. That bit about him going soft…he never did. It’s…it’s easier to imagine him as flawed. He wasn’t. But he was needful. He needed someone there. He was loving and tender and it scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what to do. For any of you. I knew how to kick asses and get things done, not how to play games or be affectionate or do that shit.”

“I wanted to do things differently. God help me, I tried for twenty years,” my mother continued. “But I just…couldn’t. It wasn’t in me. I was broken. Wrong. And I realized that I couldn’t ever be fixed. And your father…it became harder and harder to watch him suffer. I drank more. I yelled at him more. He withdrew more. I hated seeing him so miserable, but I couldn’t do anything right. I filed for divorce. I thought he’d find someone else, forget about me, but then…”

“I got the call when I was at work. It was a policeman over in Rochester. They had found him in the bath tub with his veins opened…”

She wiped at her eyes with a shaking hand. But more tears filled the spot. Tears. From my mother. She took a deep drink.

“You were right. I hated him. I used him for money. Kill me. Do it.”

==YOU LOVED HIM.==

My mother was shaking, her eyes shut. “No. I still love him. I wish I was dead instead. Every day. I wish it was me. I’m just committing suicide at a slower rate than him, because I’m terrified to see him. It’s too late for me. You two…should go. Or finish me off.”

==YOU KNOW…I KNOW SOMEONE. HIS NAME IS UNSPEAKABLE. HE DRESSES IN YELLOW. HE’S A BIT OF A DEVIL. YOU’D LIKE HIM. HE ALWAYS USED TO SAY HE DIDN’T TEMPT PEOPLE INTO SIN; HE KEPT SINNERS SINNING. MADE THEM THINK THEY COULDN’T BREAK FREE. ==

My mother looked at Bea. “The Devil is just something that shows you your reflection. We live a lie when we pretend we are good. Or at least, I do. I’m sorry, Anon. I can’t be what you need me to be. It’s too late. Leave me to my alcohol and tiny cocked gigolo. And hate me. I deserve it.”

She looked away, down the hallway towards the kitchen.

I sighed. I took out the white envelope holding the invitation from my pocket.

“Bea and I…” I stopped. “I want you to come to the wedding,” I said. “…Mom.”

She didn’t move. I put the invitation down on the liquor cabinet gently, near the bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

My mother looked back. She stared at it, then at me. She was shaking. Her eyes were red. She stood, and raced from the room.

I sighed. “I guess we should go.”

Bea hugged me.

==I’M SORRY, HUN.==

I shrugged. “The offer remains open.” I looked around. “I always hated this house.”

Back to Main Page

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I settled into my new job and domestic life. Bea and I moved into her place on Yaddith with Gaston (a story in and of itself), and preparations for the wedding began. Gaston kept us busy, and with another baby on the way our family seemed primed to grow.

We visited Bea’s parents’ house every Sunday, to eat some usually alive concoction and then have coffee and dessert. Nyarlathotep would generally stop by in the afternoons, and we’d swap stories of TIE fighter glory while Bea and her mother fussed over Gaston. It was at one such visit, before dinner, that Azathoth approached me.

“Perhaps you can help me with something…” Azathoth said, his brow furrowed. “I have a software program I need to get running, but I think it’s broken. Could you take a look?”

“Sure. Although I’m surprised you didn’t ask Nyarlathotep,” I said. “He’s the computer whiz. Well…he’s the everything whiz.”

Azathoth rubbed the back of his neck. “Thing is…sometimes I don’t want to go to him. I…ah, you’ve probably heard people say that I have a reputation for being clueless.”

“Never heard that,” I said, immediately and definitively.

“Oh. Well, some people say it. And I don’t like it much. Nyarlathotep is the worst. He’ll deny it up and down, but I see the looks when he thinks I’m not paying attention. Sometimes it’s just good to resolve a problem without him.”

I nodded, suddenly feeling a little sad for the blind idiot god.

The Den was a small room full of books, with an old day bed on one side and a faux-wood desk on the other. An ancient computer with a CRT monitor at least eight feet long sat on the old desk, caked in dust.

Azathoth booted up his PC, and with the sounds of dusty fans firing to life a cheery beep sounded.

“It’s this CD that Bertie gave me a few weeks ago…” Azathoth said with a frown.

As the minutes passed, I watched as a DOS bootup gave way to the white screen and flat boxes of Windows 3.1. When the tada chime hit, Azathoth sprung into action.

The CD tray hurtled open with a moan like an old man, and Azathoth deposited a CD with the words “Hedgehog Game” written on it in marker. The CD Tray closed, wobbling with the grace of 90s tech.

The game loaded after a few minutes of whirring and stopping. It didn’t look like a normal game about a fast Hedgehog.

For one thing it was all wrong, letting you select a fox, a fat guy, or a lady hedgehog. Azathoth selected the fox.

He ran through a forest full of dead animal sprites, as the fox character looked increasingly fearful, until the Hedgehog appeared and attack with an 8-bit internal sound card scream

“See? It keeps doing that!” Azathoth said with frustration as he tossed his joystick onto the floor. “How am I supposed to beat this game when THAT keeps happening?”

The blue hedgehog filled the screen with a creepy, Demonic grin.

“Ohhhh, I know this one,” I said. “I read about it online. I tapped the monitor, and the blue hedgehog grinned at my hand. “The game has a demon in it, and he’s trying to abduct people to be his torture toys.”

“That’s the plot of the game?” Azathoth said, a confused frown on his face.

“No, no…I think that’s actually what’s going on. There’s a demon in the CD,” I responded.

Slowly, Azathoth put a finger against the CRT monitor, a blanket of static crackling loudly as his finger approached. He hovered above the grinning Hedgehog, then darted, tapping him on the eye.

Azathoth’s finger penetrated the monitor like it was a drop of water, and made contact with the Hedgehog’s eye, who began howling in pain as he backed away. Red pixels were flowing from his eyesocket as the hedgehog spun and clutched at the spot with two hands.

Azathoth laughed uproariously, clapping his hands in genuine delight. His finger darted more, touching the hedgehog all over his body, doubling him over and snapping bones until he collapsed. But still the Daemon Sultan kept poking, each time only laughing louder at the damage he caused.

After a few minutes of prodding and daemonic high-pitched laughter, a purple and blackened heap lay in the center of the black screen, his chest heaving slowly, while Azathoth wiped tears from his eyes as he caught his own breath.

“I’ll play with that more later…” he said, hitting the CD Open button as the hedgehog whimpered. The screen cleared and returned to Windows as the CD tray opened.

“That Bertie…he finds funny stuf,” Azathoth said as he carefully put the CD back in its case. He put a hand to my shoulder, and his grin faded to a somber look of gratitude.

“Anon, you’ve done me a kindness, and I shall return the favor. I know I have a reputation as clueless – and you know that too, despite how polite you were being earlier- but I never forget a kindness…” he tapped his forehead with his finger twice to accentuate the point. “I’m going to get you the very best gift you could ever imagine.”

“That isn’t necessary,” I said.

“Come now, you deserve it. Ace pilot, soon partner at the firm, computer whiz…consider it a welcome to the family gift. I just need to figure out what that gift is.”

I swallowed and laughed. “Well, I appreciate it.”

“Think nothing of it. Well, let’s go join the womenfolk. I owe that son of yours a horsey ride.”

Dinner was nice. When we had finished eating our Sligs and the servers were bringing out coffee, Nyarlathotep stopped by. Azathoth animatedly told him about the Hedgehog game, passing me a sly grin as he spoke.

After dinner and before dessert, our rambunctious toddler was acting up, and so I elected to take him out for a quick constitutional to run some of the crazy out of him.

We went to visit Azathoth’s true form – called Daddy Mountain by the family – and after running alongside the vast, vast wall of pulsing Father-in-Law for a few minutes, Gaston seemed a bit more tired, and I elected to head back to the house.

As we returned I saw another craft parked alongside ours, one I didn’t recognize. I squinted at the figure on the walkway. The head of blonde curls and broad shoulders were both familiar to me, in ages past, and I felt the old dread for a split second. But that was impossible, I told myself. It had to be. He was ancient history, back in upstate New York, no longer around to torment me. But then the figure turned, and my blood went cold.

It was him.

Thaddeus Zane, my hated schoolyard rival, the blonde-haired athlete-scholar who had surpassed me in all fields and taken everything I had strived for. I sought to be the starting pitcher on the Varsity Baseball team, but Thaddeus won the job . I sought to be first chair in band, but Thaddeus won. And worst of all, there was our battle over the affections of the goat-maiden Lizavita…

I felt the chill of adrenaline as it coarsed through my undead blood, feeling the same grim determination I felt before I entered a dogfight. Before I killed. Thaddeus always came to take what I most valued, and now he was here. I elected to subtly but firmly probe him to see what his designs were.

“Thaddeus Zane!” I shouted through clenched teeth, the best I could attempt at tact given the raw hate I felt.

Gaston jumped a little at my voice, and looked up at me and then to this interloper. Beneath his helm his skull eyes hardened, and his hand went to Quel’Serrar.

Thaddeus turned, shocked at first, but when he saw it was me he crinkled his nose with disgust.

“Anon? he said, my name leaving his lips like a cruel insult. “I thought it was someone important for a second.”

“What are you doing here?” I growled, aware my whole body was shaking with rage…and fear.

“What are you?” He snapped. “Why would-” he stopped as though slapped, his mouth agape. He blinked twice, then laughed mockingly. “Oh this is…this is too much! You can’t possibly be who she was talking about, could you?”

She…he had spoken to her. They had talked about me. I saw red. Blood rushed through my ears. I looked down at the bundle in his hands.

Snapdragons.

I saw that awful moment in my head again, when Lizavita leaned up to kiss him on her tiptoes, and one leg shot out, and she…she cooed…

The memory hurt, even after years of war and love. But worse, I saw it again with Bea’s face. The thought of her even speaking his name filled me with rage. The world blurred until there was only me and Thaddeus, until the cosmos was nothing but hatred and murder.

“No…” I whispered. “No, no, no, YOU WILL DIE!”

I didn’t cast the lightning so much as it simply erupted out of my hands, a snaking jagged torrent that would have made Sheev proud. The purple light arced with all my fury and hate straight at this usurper. This homewrecker.

It might have cooked all the fluid in his miserable body, but the bastard held up his hands, and the lightning entered his palms like it was a metal rod on a high mountain. As he gathered it in he grinned, and with a flick of his wrist a strand of it returned at me.

The strand hit me before I could react, and I flew backward five feet, landing with the wind knocked out of me on the ground that wasn’t there. Holy shit that hurt, I thought to myself.

“I trained with Master Yoda,” Thaddeus said with all the smarm he could as I struggled to regain my senses. “Back when I flew for Rogue Squadron.”

A rebel too, I thought. Could it get any worse? I raised my hands but the lightning hit had drained me…

“Maybe it’s best that you just leave,” Thaddeus said. “After all, she can do much better than a loser like…”

His words were cut off by a booming war cry and the cracking sound made when a toddler in full revenant armor collides with a man’s knees. Mighty as Thaddeus was, Gaston’s force and fury was too great, and he toppled to the ground.

Thaddeus cursed, and with his bare hand parried away a killing strike from Quel’Serrar, leaping to his feet as he put the full force of his fists into my son. But Gaston had tanked 40-man Naxxramas, and he weathered the hits beneath his shield with loud clanks, giving no ground and drawing all of Thaddeus’ attention.

True to form, Gaston turned Thaddeus so that his back was facing me. He might not be able to spell his name, I thought, but he was a natural tank.

I stood, drawing in all my rage. The lightning exploded from my fingertips, and there was no way the gold-haired bastard would catch it this time.

The lightning connected and with a cry of pure agony Thaddeus toppled over Gaston and against the ground beyond, landing and twisting to vainly try to counter me. But it was
too late for that. I continued to pour lightning through my fingertips, savoring the pure, brutal pain. Lightning was the cruel death. The drawn out death.

“C’mon!” I shouted over the rushing current of energy. “Let’s…hear…that…pop!”

Thaddeus snaked on the ground as blue lightning washed over him like water, writhing and gyrating as he cried out. Satisfying as it was, I wanted him gone. Needed him gone.

But then a tentacle gasped me with a hiss and held me aloft, and Gaston too. A wall of tentacles formed between me and Thaddeus, their eyeless medusa panicked and fearful.

My eyes searched. Bea had exited the house, her eyes wide with horror and her dainty shaking hand over her mouth.

==THADDEUS!==

The name cut worse than any blade or dagger could have, to hear it leave her lips.

“You choose him?!” I raged, aware tears were filling my eyes. “After all we’ve done…this bastard shows up and you betray me?! I…I…I’ll tell Azathoth it’s a dream! I’ll bring your fucking universe crashing down! I’ll kill us all!”

==ANON, PLEASE…==

“Never Bea! I will do it unless he dies!” I shouted.

==YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND…==

“M-mom…” Thaddeus moaned, whimpering. Steam rose off of him as he clutched at his chest.

My incalculable rage gave way to shock. “Mom!?” I stammered.

==OH GOD HE’S IN SUCH PAIN…==

Bea raced over to him. Gaston struggled against his binding tentacle, still intent on attacking his father’s enemy.

Tentacles began to appear and disappear with ointments and gauzes, administering them to my charred nemesis.

==ARE YOU OKAY BABY?==

“I…I’m okay,” he said in a whisper. “Send…send him away.”

==JUST RELAX HONEY. LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT THIS. YOU BOTH GOT OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT.==

“You mean his attack? Feeble, like everything he’s ever done,” Thaddeus said, getting back his strength as the balms healed him. “And he cheated. I had beaten him, then he had his halfling attack me.”

==THAT’S YOUR BROTHER, GASTON==

Thaddeus looked at him dismissively. “Another one. I’ll put him on the list of ones I forget exist.”

==YOU’RE MAD. LOOK, GO INSIDE AND WE’LL TALK.==

“I’ll go inside,” Thaddeus said. He pointed at me. “But he needs to go.”

==THADDEUS, PLEASE…==

Azathoth appeared at the doorway, a warm smile on his face.

“Ah, Thaddeus, you’ve dropped by. You’ve met Gaston, I see. He is the finest of all my grandchildren, including and especially compared to you. And I find his father infinitely more acceptable than the seed-drone who was your father, whom I murdered by the way because I hated him so much. What are your plans for today?”

Thaddeus crumpled.

==HE’S EATING DESSERT WITH US, DADDY.==

“Inside voice, darling,” Azathoth said, a gleam in his eye which was frightening. “We move our lips like civilized people here. Well, it’s all good. Come on in. Just don’t be too much of a fucking faggot, eh, Rogue Squadron?”

“I think I’ll pass on, thanks…” Thaddeus said.

“Thad please…” Bea pleaded.

Azathoth blinked.

“I invited you in,” he said. “You would refuse me?”

Thaddeus swallowed. His eyes darted to Bea.

“Please stay,” Bea said. “Let’s just all start over.”

My nemesis sighed. “Very well. I’ll stay.”

“Whoop-de-fucking doo,” Azathoth said. “C’mon Gaston, let’s go play ‘favorite grandson.’”

As we entered the house, Bea took me aside and gave me a big hug.

“You’re trembling…” she said. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, my heart still pounding in my chest. “I was so scared, Bea. I thought someone was going to take you. I had to…I wanted to fight. I’m sorry…”

“No, no…I should have told you, but I didn’t know you were so angry at him. You didn’t tell me…”

I shrugged. “He never came up.”

“No, I mean…well, true,” she said.

“I don’t understand Bea, I thought you hadn’t had a serious relationship for two million years, that you’ve been on the rebound…”

She smiled sadly. “I um, didn’t.”

“But…”

“Mortimer Zane was just a single date,” she said. “It was awful. He was a bore. On and on about the plight of the Worker and women and all this bullshit. I was ready to annihilate him. But then as he was driving me home, when he parked in front of my house…” she shrugged. She took my hand. “Something happened, which happens every time I am to be with child.”

“An…urge?” I asked.

She nodded. “I suppose you could call it that. I can’t say much more.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t. But listen Anon…I love you. It’s always been just you.”

I smiled. “It’s nice of you to say that, but there have been other…”

“No, there haven’t. There haven’t,” she said forcefully.

“Didn’t you have a husband?” I asked.

Bea smiled and squeezed my hand. “And I shall again.”

“So it was all just…sexual urges in between?”

She took a deep breath. “It has different meaning than you think.”

“You are being cryptic.”

“I am being eldritch, which is appropriate. You are worried about me choosing Thaddeus over you. That is not a choice that will ever be made.”

“Do you…love the children more than me?” I asked. “I know it’s a horrible question. I know I have no right to ask it, but I have to…”

“It’s different kind of love,” Bea said, putting a hand on my cheek. “You have no idea how important you are to me. Or to them.”

“Them? That doesn’t…”

“You two get back in there,” Mother Darkness said. “I can only keep Azathoth from torturing Thaddeus for so long. The boy’s close to a blowup.”

Coffee and dessert came. Bea sat next to me, across from Thaddeus, who did his best to look indifferent to us. Gaston sat with his grandfather, being bounced on one knee.

The dessert was tense. Mostly Nyarlathotep discussed Gaston’s excellent performance and manner, sipping his wine and casting glances at Thaddeus. Azathoth’s will, after all…

After we ate the darkest chocolate cake in the universe, Mother Darkness went in the kitchen to supervise the cleaning. Bea took Gaston to get him changed, and Azathoth just wandered out of the room.

I was left alone with Thaddeus, while Nyarlathotep watched quietly.

“Look, Thad,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I love your mother. I know it’s been difficult between us, and you have every right to be mad at me for…well, earlier, and I apologize. I’m willing to put it all behind us for your Mom’s sake.”

Thaddeus laughed and shook his head slightly. “You crack me up Anon. I want you to understand something…” Thaddeus said, twirling his coffee cup. “You are not the first guy my mother shacked up with. There have been millions.“

“That was before me…” I said.

“And so it shall be afterward. You are a drop of water in an ocean. The next time you are in bed with her, look at the headboard. If each man were a notch on it, there would be no headboard left.”

I idly thought about the fact there was no headboard in Bea’s room, but cast the thought aside.

“You are calling your own mother a slut?”
I asked.

“Slut…how quaint,” Thaddeus said. “Mother is a cosmic being. Monogamy is a concept that is beneath her. She has a more evolved view.”

“Your mother is a loyal and true woman.”

Thaddeus laughed. “Sure, to her children and to her parents. But what mate of hers has lasted longer than a year in the last two million years, since her darling husband died?”

“I have.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong but you were gone for a few years, flying those rickety TIE pieces of shit. Mother will grow tired of you. It is only natural.”

“You don’t know her at all, do you?”

He smiled. “Expecting a woman of mother’s caliber to tie herself to one person -especially a mortal- is foolish.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” I asked. “That some people deserve to cheat?”

He smiled. “Some are alpha and some are beta. And some are cuckolds, who stand and watch when their girl is taken from them.”

“I didn’t stand and watch. I took a swing at you,” I said.

“…and missed, and fell into the pavement, and she walked away on my arm. Which is more pathetic than inaction, if you think about it. She was concerned for you at first, but when I kissed her again, she forgot.”

My nostrils flared. “Just how long after I left did you stay with Lizavita?” I whispered.

A cruel smile crept up his lips. “Once you were gone the fun of it just…disappeared. She was a simpleton, with the same dumb ideas as you about love and marriage. I only regret it now, since I am forced to suffer through you at family functions. You will be an annoyance until your time is up.”

“I am undead. I shall not die,” I said.

He laughed. “Then you will go hollow when she dumps you. She will have to choose between us. She will never choose her latest squeeze over her own flesh and blood. I will win.”

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I said, icily.

“You never had the chance,” he shot back. “Mortal.”

“I’m a mortal who has your grandfather’s favor,” I said.

“And what does that buy you? My grandfather once got lost on the golf course. For forty-eight hours. And when Nyarlathotep found him, he was talking to an eye-level spruce tree about the differences between toilets in Europe and Japan.”

“Oh, lad…” Nyarlathotep said, reminding us he was watching from the corner as he sipped his wine. “That should only make you fear him more.”

Azathoth wandered back into the room, holding a blackened ball-like object waist-high.

“Ah Thaddeus…could you hold this for me?”

Thaddeus let out a defeated sigh and stood, crossing the room and grasping the object in one hand. “Yes, grandfather…”

“Two hands, boy,” Azathoth said with a frown as he clamped on his pipe.

Thaddeus rolled his eyes and held the object with both hands. He frowned.

“This…this is a skull.”

“Yes…” Azathoth said as he fished his cock out from his pajamas and robe. I would rather not have seen it, but it dominated the room, barbed and gnarled like a root from a burning tree in the deepest pit of hell. “This…is your father’s skull. Hold it steady. At my waist.”

Thaddeus complied; what choice did he have? A stream of yellow left Azathoth’s daemonic cock and entered the skull where the spine would attach, hitting with the sound of a hose blasting metal at high pressure.

Thaddeus looked down in horror, his hands shaking. The whole time
Azathoth stared at Thaddeus’ face, almost daring him to say something, or do something.

“Hold it steady…Rogue Leader,” Azathoth snarled aggressively as he let out a deep groan. He finished with two shakes.

“Alright. Go dump that in the toilet and flush,” Azathoth said. He snapped his fingers and one of the butlers rushed over with a finger bowl and towel, which he dabbed his hands in.

Thaddeus stood there for a moment, holding the vessel of urine that was his father’s skull, his eyes red and his teeth clenched.

“Something you’d like to say?” Azathoth said. He showed his fangs, and I realized the primordial cosmic horror was sizing up his own grandson for a snack.

Thaddeus shook his head, aware of the danger.

“Then dump out the urine,” Azathoth said. “And wash your hands when you are done.”

Thaddeus rushed from the room, and Azathoth sat down, brushing at his knee. “I’m going to catch hell for that,” Azathoth said, looking at the tablecloth with a smile.

Nyarlathotep chuckled. “Very astute observation, boss. I suspect in a few-“

“Daddy?!” Bea shouted, storming into the room. “Did you give Thaddeus the ol’ piss skull?!”

Azathoth reclined in his chair and put a hand on his stomach. “I did. And it was so much fun that I want to do it again. Nyarl old man, run to the kitchen and fetch me some asparagus.”

Nyarlathotep stood wordlessly with a bow and left the room, brushing past my goat girl who stood quivering with rage.

“Daddy!” Bea shouted. “Thaddeus is outside crying. He thinks you hate him…”

Good, I thought. Bea read my thoughts and she shot me a glare.

“Punkin…you should have heard the tripe he was saying,” Azathoth said. “Nyarlathotep was filling me in. He was running down your fiance pretty good. Now your fiance is a mask and hose man. I won’t have that traitor bastard taking potshots. He said Anon was a cuckold. Your son stole a girlfriend from him once. Said you would cast him aside.”

Bea looked at me with her mouth open.

“H-he did?”

I sighed, and nodded.

Bea bit her lip. I saw sorrow in her eyes. “There will be no peace between you, will there?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry Bea; he’s an asshole. I tried. Dearly as I love you, it is not possible. The man is my enemy.”

Bea looked at me and at her father. “I will talk to him,” she said. “Make him apologize.”

==THADDEUS GET IN HERE==

Thaddeus entered, sniffling, the skull cradled in his hands.

“Good, you brought the skull…” Azathoth said, taking a giant gulp of water and eyeing it like a shark eyeing a tuna.

“Daddy, please! Thaddeus is hurt and lashing out,” she turned and took Thaddeus’ hand. “Now Thad, baby, I love you; I am your mother. I will always love you. But Anon is my fiance. He is the man I have chosen to spend the rest of my life with. If you love me, you will respect that, and you will be civil. If you will not respect him, you can leave.”

“You…you are choosing him over me?” Thaddeus asked. There was hurt in his voice.

“I don’t want to choose, baby. Don’t force this,” Bea said. “But if I must…it has to be this way.”

Thaddeus snorted. “The Others will be thrilled to hear that, I’m sure.”

“They shall understand,” Bea said.

“Nug? Yeb? Accept him??” Thaddeus scoffed. “They would not let him in their cults, let alone accept this latecomer mortal as their father. And as child after child leaves you, you will look upon your ‘husband’ and see only the faces of those you lost!”

He broke free. “He is NOT my father!”

“Alright, everything stop,” Azathoth said.

The universe froze. The very air hung in place. Bea’s beautiful face was serene in that moment, frozen in time, her eyes shut as she was opening her mouth. To speak? To plead? I couldn’t tell.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Not to alarm you son, but I can do…things. One of those things is to fundamentally reorder the universe. I was hoping I could fix this with some good old-fashioned merciless bullying, but it looks like this could turn into a full-on rift. We need to nip this in the bud before we have a multi-eon feud.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“That’s just the thing; I’m not sure. The fundamental problem is that Thaddeus is right; Nug, Yeb, and all the others will never accept you in the family just because you are fucking their mother. I can’t go eating all of them; your future mother in law is after me on my cholesterol as it is. They will forever be railing against you and Bea will have to cut them loose. This will hurt her greatly. She won’t ever leave you but quite honestly it will empty out the family functions. But how to fix it…let’s get Nyarl in on this. He’s clever.”

Nyarlathotep entered the room, carrying a giant plate heaped with asparagus.

“I got the asparagus boss…” he stopped and looked around. “You froze time?”

“Yes; the problem we discussed has reared its ugly head,” Azathoth said. “Let us prepare to the Astromancy lab. We must make calculations.”

The Astromancy lab sat behind a darkwood door that was labelled “STELLAR CARTOGRAPHY.” It was a white room, four or five stories tall on the inside. The door opened to a walkway to a platform, looking out on a holographic display of a vast field of stars.

I sat at the control console. Nyarlathotep sat at a small desk away from the starfield, piled with notebooks and an abacus. He had put on a green visor.

“Rap with me, Nyarl…” Azathoth said. He tapped his finger on a small dot among the uncountable dots which comprised the star field. “What if we vaporize the Iconian homeworld forty thousand years in the past?”

Nyarl adjusted his green visor, then squinted and began fluttering
The abacus back and forth. He mouthed the result and scribbled furiously. “Four quadrillion people will die or never be born, 3.99 quadrillion people will be born who don’t exist now…George Washington will have married a Succubus who convinced him to become Emperor of America…Thaddeus will be four feet tall and a Mexican…and Anon will have lobster claws.”

“Well…that could help,” Azathoth said. “Nug and Yeb won’t take a stumpy beaner seriously and they’ll respect your claws…any downsides?”

“Ummm…” Nyarlathotep intoned, still scribbling. “Bertie will miss golf next Tuesday.”

“Oh well that’s right out,” Azathoth said. He tapped his chin as he walked amongst the stars. “So what can we vaporize?”

“If I may, boss…” Nyarlathotep said. “Perhaps vaporization isn’t needed. It seems like our problem can be solved less by manipulating chaos theory and more through deterministic action. I think what we need is downstairs.”

“Downstairs?”

“Yes; the Yithian device.”

Azathoth’s face lit up. “Of course! It’s so simple. An elegant solution…”

“What?” I asked.

“I’ll explain in the basement,” Nyarlathotep said. “It’ll be easier with props.”

The basement was a filthy mess. Concrete walls and a dirt floor, with a busted old workbench in one corner near a bulkhead. Old appliances littered the area like a graveyard, as did palettes of various sundry items that Azathoth insisted on buying in bulk, like paper towels, toiler paper, and flat upon flat of grocery store brand soft drinks.

“For this plan we just need one of these…”Nyarlathotep said. He fished through a black shelf full of junk and finally extracted an item through the heap: an oblong helmet with wires dangling down like the nerves from a plucked eye.

“Ah good!” Azathoth said. “I was half afraid we’d need to go buy another one.”

“What’s it do?” I asked.

“Time travel, my boy, time travel,” Azathoth said, clearing off a barber’s chair with torn cushioning. “You can sit here. We’ll just need some straps to tie you down…”

“Tie me down? What-“

Azathoth wandered off into the dark beyond the light, and I heard junk being moved about. I sighed and looked back at Nyarlathotep.

“So what’s the idea? I stop Thaddeus from being born?” I asked.

Nyarlathotep smiled. He tapped the helmet and held it out to me.

“This…this is a Yithian mindswap device. It can swap minds with anyone at anytime. Well, anyone with a baryonic matter body. Now the interesting thing about the mindswapping process is that the minds physically alter to match their host; the brain is the architecture, after all. So, we can ‘cheat’, and add an organelle to the brain which produces haploid cells. It will be recreated on the other side.”

“Haploid, as in sperm and eggs?” I asked.

“That’s right, English major,” Nyarlathotep said dryly. “In your case, it will be sperm. The organelle will carry a package of it back in time, which will serve our purposes.”

“Purposes? You mean…”

Nyarlathotep nodded.

“…I father Thaddeus?”

Nyarlathotep smirked. “And the others, as well.”

“It’s brilliant,” Azathoth said, returning with straps and handcuffs. “Once you are pater familias of all of Bea’s children, they will have to accept you. The relationship will be changed; you will be the ancient and eternal consort of their mother, the fountainhead.”

“But if all of Bea’s children will be mine, won’t they be different?”

“If I had to guess,” Nyarlathotep said. “They already are your children. Or will be. Or were once. Or could be. We’re orthogonal to linear causality right now while the timeline is on hiatus. Technically speaking thanks to Quantum observation and the presence of time travel devices, at this moment the universe in fact does not exist beyond this room and never has.”

“It’s a long-winded way of saying it’ll all sort out when it’s done,” Azathoth said. “I can fix up any dangling issues if need be.”

“But how do I get sperm out of my brain and, for lack of a better phrasing, into Bea?”

“Bea will be able to make the modifications necessary to link the organelle’s contents to the urethra of the host,” Nyarlathotep said. “I’ll hardcode the instructions of how to do it on the organelle surface.”

“You’ll need to take into account the different alien types she’s slept with,” Azathoth said.

“Not an issue. She generally goes for humanoids. If it’s flesh cloud it doesn’t even matter.”

“Will she need any tools?”

“Just you,” Nyarlathotep said with a sigh. “Now…it’s not enough to have the Yithian device. We need conception times and locations for all of Bea’s children.”

“For that we need the Weirwood net,” Azathoth said, pointing to the pale grayish tree half-obscured by the darkness next to an old washing machine and broken palette. That old fellow who lives in it can map it all out.”

On closer examination, a man was intertwined with the tree, pale like milk and impossibly wizened; a single shining eye visible on a face obscured by darkness and tree.

“Anon…or some say, Anonsm…He who Shall Not Be Named…I am the three-eyed crow,” he said in a deep, tired voice. “And I am Bloodraven the…”

“Absolutely no one cares,” Azathoth said, tapping fluid out of his pipe. “We need you to compile all the times and places that my daughter conceived.”

The old man smacked his lips. “I thirst.”

“Oh? Right…” Azathoth said. He bowed, and a ring of fire formed. In its center a man in a tattered filthy black winter coat appeared, bearing a scraggly beard with patches of dark gray. He looked worn and tired, but his dark eyes were wide with fright.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Some hobo. You’ll need to kill him,” Azathoth said as the hobo gasped at our voices. “The tree needs blood.”

The hobo trembled in a half-crouch, quaking as his wide eyes searched his surroundings, wondering if this was some hallucination from swallowing too much Listerine to combat his shakes.

I put on my Darkwraith glove, and readied to drain the precious Humanity from this gin-soaked husk.

“No, no. You’ll need to do it more physically,” Azathoth said, smacking his fist into his open hand demonstrably. He scanned the mass of brick-a-brack on the shelves.

“Here…use this…”
He said. He twirled a black object in the air and handing it to me by the square bottom.

It was a bust of Red Foxx. The stern face of Fred Sanford stared up at me, forever perplexed and irritated by some statement by his son. It had good heft to it.

“Alright,” I said, looking down at the hobo. He stared up at me with his wide cow eyes, pleading wordlessly not to die. But what life did he have, that he wished me to spare it?

“This is the big one,” I said. I raised the bust above my head. The hobo lifted his arm to shield himself and shut his tired eyes.

It’s an odd thing to murder someone with the Sandord and Son theme song stuck in your head, particularly when it takes longer than what you remember of the song and it loops.

When I finished, I was slick red with blood, and the remnants of the hobo lay sprawled before me, broken and twisted.

“Does that suffice?” I asked.

“That’s very nice, but I meant a Yoohoo,” the old man said.

“Oh…right…” Azathoth went to the mini fridge, stepping over my victim’s annihilated corpse. He pulled open the refrigerator door, and a moment later there was the hiss of an opening can.

Azathoth held the can up to Bloodraven’s lips. He drank a sip, then a ravenous gulp as Azathoth up-ended the can. Not a drop spilled.

“That’s good,” he said, licking a trace of the brown drink from his lips. “Chocolate-y. Alright, let me get that for you…”

His shiny eye went milky white, and he drifted away into some realm of his mind.

“…shit’s disgusting…” I muttered, looking at the empty can of yoohoo in Azathoth’s hand. “Perfectly good blood…”

“Now Anon, don’t get upset. Bloodraven’s the product of centuries of inbreeding,” Azathoth explained.

“I have the list,” Bloodraven said, as an old ribbon printer began to whine and a paper slowly slid outward.

All told it was fifteen pages – names, dates, places.

I sat down in the chair as Azathoth and Nyarlathotep affixed handcuffs and lashed straps.

“Why do I need to be tied down?” I asked as I was constricted.

“It’s a mind swap device,” Azathoth said. “Mortimer Zane, will be in your body while you are in his. We don’t want him wandering off.”

I took a deep breath.

“Ready, anon?” Nyarlathotep asked.

I nodded.

“Once we get him hooked up we’ll have some time to kill,” Nyarlathotep said.

“Don’t worry. I got this hedghog game. It’ll be great…”

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Ultimately we decided to marry after the birth of our second child. Our first wedding a million years prior had been a hasty affair, done in a DC-8 with Xemu officiating while a shocked nation looked on, trying to make sense of it all. For this one, Bea wanted something more memorable, and I was canny enough to realize it was her day and to agree. My Shub Niggurath attacked the planning with fervor.

Of course, it also meant no end of headaches, with most of the headaches going to her. That morning my eldritch goat girl sat at the table, the mass of invitations in front of her. The list of names was gigantic, and giant heaps of letters were piled in the dining room. Tens of thousands, with tens of thousands to go.

In the living room I heard the sounds of Gaston jumping and shouting, and Eileen the Crow sternly admonishing him to focus as he leapt, or deploy his Visceral sooner, followed by a long bang. She was training him in the use of a blunderbuss to stun an opponent, a curious Japanese art which was almost like a game mechanic.

“Eighty thousand people?” I asked, looking over the final tally number on Bea’s list while a loud report echoed down the walls.

“Well there’s the kids, and the grandkids, and the descendants…” she started.

“We’re going to need a stadium for this,” I said. “We’re well beyond your Dad getting the folding table out of the basement.”

Bea nodded, stacking up the finished invitations as she pulled another blank one in front of her. “We’ll have to use the spare room at Mom and Dad’s house.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, I know you and your Mom can sometimes clash about party details…”

“It’ll be fine…” Bea said with a smile.

This was what she always said, I knew, before the fights with her Mom began. It would start small, but by the end there would be tears and epithets, and Azathoth and I would need to make peace between them.

“I’ll go on record to say this isn’t a good plan,” I said.

“Oh piffle. And by the way, we do need to discuss your side of the family,” Bea said as she finished licking the envelope shut.

I laughed. “No, we don’t.”

Bea gave me her sly smile and blinked her eyes. “Come on, sweetie. It’s our wedding, we have to invite your family.”

“We don’t ‘have’ to, and we shouldn’t.”

“You say that, but I know you,” she pulled out a fresh invitation. “Let’s start with Jane.”

I shuddered.

“Now that’s uncalled for,” Bea said. “Jane is very nice.”

“She’s polite, not nice. She’s never liked me,” I said. “She won’t come; she’ll just send a book of her menstrual poetry or something.”

“Well, then you won’t have to put up with her but you’ll have made the effort,” Bea said. “Now how about Ted?”

“He’s in jail,” I said.

“So is Xemu, but he’s still coming,” Bea said.

“Ted lacks Xemu’s acumen for jailbreaking. He got caught because he went back to try to fix his getaway car the day after the robbery.”

“Well, I’ll send him an invitation too, anyways,” Bea said. “Okay?”

I sighed. “Fine,” I said.

“Good!” Her hand drifted to one more card. “That just leaves your…”

“No,” I said.

“Now honey…”

“No!” I shouted. “Don’t even say it.”

Bea looked at me for a moment, then took a breath. “Your mother…” she began gently.

“Absolutely not, Bea!” I shouted. “I hate her.”

“There’s a difference between hate and being angry,” she said. “You are angry, not hateful.”

“I think I know what I feel,” I said.

“If you hated her, you’d have roasted her with force lightning by now.”

“That would require me to care enough to go home,” I said.

“Well, put up or shut up, sweetie; go roast her if you hate her so much.”

I grunted. “There’s no point.”

“You don’t want to because you don’t want to hurt her. I know it all really bothers you, hun,” she pressed. “You wish you were closer to her.”

I shook my head. “No I don’t. She’s vile.”

Bea smirked. “Oh please. My parents have eaten-“

“Yes, yes I know; puppies and orphans. But as crazy as Azathoth is, as cruel and psychotic, he’d never in a million years harm your Mom. My poor Dad…”

“Maybe she feels bad about what happened,” Bea said. “Maybe that’s why she pushed you all away.”

“She’s just not a good person, sweetie,” I responded. “She never cared much about being a mom.”

“I tell you what; why don’t we go see her?” Bea asked. “Go and introduce me. If she’s as bad as you say, we won’t invite her.”

“Why are you so eager for a reconciliation?” I asked.

Bea looked blinked her eyes rapidly, somewhat insulted. “You’re my husband. I want to make you happy with your family.”

“Let me think about it,” I said at last.

Bea smiled and nodded. “Alright. I guess that’s…” she grimaced and held her stomach.

“The baby?” I asked.

She nodded. “Lots of jostling. Think maybe there’s more than one…”

“Twins?”

“Maybe. Or more. We’ll know in a few weeks, won’t we?”

I smiled. “Maybe we should wait to travel, until after the birth?”

Bea waved her hand. “No, no. I’ll be fine.”

I helped Bea write the invitations. Once her tentacles got involved it went quickly. We had eighty thousand invitations ready to mail out, stacked in hogshead barrels near the mailbox. Fortunately our Dhole mailman could heft them as easily as Bea could heft a planet.

The next morning I went to work. It was a typical day: Azathoth and Bertie drank in the common room and I worked a few accounts. I also had to lock Kowalski in his closet after he microwaved kaputsa and stank up the breakroom. Then we went to O’Grady’s pub at lunch and trashed the place.

I drove home half-cocked, but since it’s space it didn’t matter so much that I was swerving everywhere. I wound up stopping off to take a leak at Federation Starbase 224. Federation toilets were always clean, but all the toilets require credits to
operate, which of course they will swear to you money doesn’t exist and isn’t important.

I was heading back from the urinal, down the hallway back to my airlock. The lights were flickering in a queer fashion, which should have clued me in that something was wrong. But then, I was drunk. I stepped toward my ship and there was a flash of green and a fizzing sound. When my eyes adjusted I found myself somewhere else. In the dark. A doom style teleporter, I knew.

I was in a room with a roaring fireplace that seemed oddly inviting, as if it was a study with a deep red rug and two bookcases. Beyond it though was a metal wall, as of the hull of a ship. I put my hands to the fire and felt replenished. Oddly replenished.

A metal door opened with a shunting sound, and a figure entered the room. A thin, pale-skinned man with a dark brown beard stood before me, in tight black jeans and a flannel shirt. He held a futuristic pistol in his hand.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“More than you know…” he said. “You are Anon, or some say, Anonsm?”

“How did you know I would be at the station?”

“In the last two weeks, you always stop there after you trash O’Grady’s,” he said. “To take a leak.”

“This is about the Bennet account, isn’t it?” I asked him. “Look, he tried to put a knife in me…”

“I’m not interesting in your accounts,” he said, his voice dripping with disgust.

“So what do you want?”

“My name is Magnus. I am the last Human in the universe,” he said through clenched teeth, the futuristic-looking pistol trained on my center. His hands shook slightly and his eyes were red.

“Not that I’m disagreeing, but I think there’s still around 6 or 7 billion people out there besides you,” I responded.

“I don’t mean now,” he snapped. “I’m from the future. A future where your son, Reismarch, has conquered the Earth. Slaughtered most of us and taken the children to be reprogrammed into his evil.”

“It sounds like there still are Humans then,” I said.

“Not true Humans. Not thinking Humans. All that are left now are Reismarch’s slaves.”

“Why? What did you do?”

“Do?! We didn’t do anything,” Magnus said. “He attacked us without provocation.”

“Because…” I started.

“There is no because!” He shouted. “He…got angry because of some sensible objections.”

“I see. Such as?”

“He didn’t like hearing the truth about his female soldiers’ costumes,” he said. “We pointed out that they were problematic.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“He overreacted,” Magnus continued. “And those costumes objectified his female soldiers. It’s forty fifteen, I mean COME ON…”

“I knew it,” I said flatly.

“You knew it?!” He shouted, his voice approaching a whine. The gun wiggled in his hands. “Because of him, I’ll never see my wife or her son again! Now shut up!”

“Or what? I’m undead, you moron,” I said. “You can’t kill me. I’ll just spawn at a bonfire.”

He chuckled, high-pitched like a hyena.

“Like that one?” He sneered, pointing at the fireplace behind me with a grin.

I laughed. “If that were a bonfire I’d have…”. I looked down, realizing my belt felt heavier. I opened my pouch, aware of the honey-gold glow within. I had five bottles of sunny D in my pouch instead of none. Shit, I thought

“You’ll be stuck here, too,” I said.

“I don’t need to do any more than that,” he responded. “I only need to corpse camp you. You can’t conceive Reismarch if you are stuck here.”

“You do realize that my wife will come looking for me, right?” I said.

“And she won’t find us,” he said. “This craft is obscure, hidden even from the eyes of the all-seeing by its no-ship engine. And I will set it to randomly jump all across the universe.”

“Well, I guess that leaves just one thing…” I said. I reached out with the force and the pistol leapt from his grip. He lunged at the levitating gun but it slipped away, on its course to its new master. My fingers closed around it as it hit my palm, and with my other hand I bent the gun with a loud snap. Magnus stared at me, wide-eyed. I shook my head.

“All that planning, and you didn’t consider that I might overpower you?”

He shrugged. “You don’t look all that threatening.”

I bristled. “You should look in a mirror before assessing threats. But perhaps this is more in line with what you’d find threatening…”

I morphed into the Feaster From Afar, my floating spaghetti monster form with long brain sucking tendrils.

“AUERRRRRRRRGH!” I announced in a moment of eloquence.

Magnus screamed, falling to his knees as the shadows of my writhing tendrils wriggled across his face in the flickering of the fireplace.

“GARRRRRRRGH!” I said as my talons brushed aside his greasy hair and found those two magic spots along the temples. I licked my six tongues along my three sets of lips

“I-I demand a trial by combat!” He squealed.

From the vestiges of my Hastur memories, one bubbled forth. I recalled the ancient rules of Azathoth, and among the most sacred wasthe trial by combat.

“NAHHHHUGH?!” I exclaimed.

I turned back into Human form, lifting him by his throat with the force.l, the rumble and cracking of the force choke pulsing in my ears.

“How do you know about that?” I growled.

“It…the necronom…” he rasped, pointing at a familiar volume on the table.

“The book…how did you get it?”

“R…Reismarch…”

“You stole it from him?” I asked. “Well, fortunately no one important heard you…”

“Now, now, Anon, let’s not be breaking any rules,” Azathoth said in the open doorway. Nyarlathotep entered a moment later, his hands behind his back as he watched blankly. My father in law grinned and rubbed his hands. “A trial by combat sounds great!”

“What were you-” I began.

“We popped in a while back. Wanted to see what would happen. Be honest; you were just going to ignore him,” Azathoth said, wagging his finger with a smile.

“Well…it is retarded,” I said. “He wants to corpse camp me. I defeated him fair and square. He must die.”

“Oh what’s a few thousand years of corpse camping?” Azathoth said. “This will make for a fun afternoon. Besides, if you can’t beat a mortal in a trial by combat, I’ve underestimated you. What are your terms, Magnus?”

“Seven champions apiece, all from Westeros,” Magnus said. “Like it says in the Necronomicon.”

“So did George finish the books by forty fifteen?” I asked.

Magnus’ eye twitched. “Only Humans,” he said, ignoring my question. “If I win, Anon stays in the no-ship prison.”

“And if you lose?” Azathoth asked with a smirk.

“If he loses…I eat his brain,” I growled.

Magnus shuddered.

Azathoth puffed his pipe. Nyarlathotep leaned over and whispered something in Azathoth’s ear. Azathoth smiled.

“Alright…Magnus, you’ll pick first,” Azathoth said. “But let’s do this in the spare room.”

Azathoth clapped his hands, and the universe swirled.

We were in a grand stadium. Hundreds of thousands of aliens, demons, and Roman plebians were cheering in the vast arena, drifting up to a black sky lit from some unseen light source. The sand was white, and in the center stood my challenger, Magnus. Bea was seated next to me, in the main box.

“Ooh a challenge by combat!” Bea said, wrapping her arm around mine. “This should be fun.”

“If I win,” I muttered.

“Oh you’ll win. You always win this kind of stuff.”

“Now we all know the rules,” Nyarlathotep said. “But I shall restate them. The trial by combat is the challenge of guile, the equalizer between man and eldritch. Its decision is absolute. Seven champions from Westeros must be chosen, who shall fight for their chooser or die. Combat is to the death, until one side is annihilated.”

Azathoth turned to Magnus.

“Alright Maggie, do you name your champions?” He asked.

Magnus bowed. “I name as my seven champions: Arthur Dayne, Barristan Selmy, Jaime Lannister, Sandor Clegane, Oberyn Martell, Brienne of Tarth, and Gregor Clegane,” Magnus said.

Little bastard took all the best fighters, I thought.

The fighters materialized, all arrayed in white armor and armed with their best weapons. Arthur Dayne with Dawn gleaming. Jaime with Widow’s wail. Brienne with Oathkeeper. Oberyn with his poison spear. The mountain with his heavy armor.

He took all the good fighters. My heart pounded in my chest. Names flooded my head. Mance Rayder, the Greatjon…Lyn Corbray? Lancel? Khal Drogo? Shit, he’s from Essos, I thought…

“I’m in trouble, here…” I whispered to Bea. “I’m going to lose.”

She blinked at me. “Ohhh sweetie,” she said, touching my cheek. “You can do it.”

“No, I can’t. He has all the good fighters.”

“You cannot win through strength; you have to win through Evil,” Bea said, patiently.

“Evil?” I asked.

“You were Hastur. They called you the unspeakable. For a million years I watched you do shit that curled even Nyarlathotep’s toes. You were not the most powerful of us, but you were the worst of us. Do that now. Do the evil thing.”

My mind raced. I took a deep breath, and went where I did not like to go: the memories of Hastur’s soul. My soul. The millions of years of nasty shit I did, the brutality. I tried to get away from all that, to be a Human again. Oh well…

I accessed that section. As memories flooded back the situation seemed far less dire. A smile traced my lips. I laughed out loud.

“Do you name your champions, Anon?” Azathoth asked.

“I do, My Sultan,” I said. “I name as my champions: Ashara Dayne, Aerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Sansa Stark, Ellara Sand, Renly Baratheon…and Bloodraven.”

“Y-you can’t…” Magnus whimpered.

“Any Humans in Westeros,” I repeated. “Who shall be compelled to fight, or they shall die. And so I choose them.”

Among the crowd, I heard the distinctive cackle of Palpatine.

My ‘champions’ materialized among the sands, holding their weapons as they whimpered, except BloodRaven, who just sighed.

The two sides stood across from each other, sorrow in their eyes. Magnus’ mouth was open in horror. His champions lowered their weapons and glanced to each other. No one wanted to fight the people they cared about, and the rules were fight, or die.

Arthur Dayne fell on his sword first, rather than harm his sister or his King. Of course the other two Kingsguard, mimic bastards that they were, followed suit. The rest went soon after – Oberyn to protect his paramour, Sandor to protect his crush, and Brienne to avoid hurting her beloved Renly. On my side as well there were deaths: Cersei took her own life when she saw Jaime fall (surprisingly), as did Ellara and Ashara. When the blood stopped flowing only Renly, Sansa, and Aerys stood across from the last of Magnus’ warriors.

Gregor was the only choice who would kill anyone and anything. And he alone was more than enough to defeat my side. But he was little more than a beast, and that was what I counted on.

The Mountain took a giant step forward, his sword raised to strike, but BloodRaven’s eyes went white. Gregor stopped with a loud cry, grabbing at his temples, while on BloodRaven’s face there was an equally pained look. The fight was within the Mountain’s mind, where wracked by headaches and a lack of mental challenge, he was at a disadvantage. Yet still he was strong-willed, and the writhing contest continued for several minutes while the arena sat in rapt silence.

The Mountain clasped his sword, fighting against the urge with spasms, but BloodRaven won, and the blade buried itself inside his stomach, through his heart, and the Mountain collapsed.

BloodRaven got out of the hulking mad dog’s mind just before death, his chest rising and falling in his tree cage.

“Good show, Bloodraven!” Azathoth said, clapping as he stood.

The arena joined him in cheering. Magnus collapsed to the sands, utterly defeated.

I descended to the arena floor, floating downward with the force.

“Now, where were we?” I said to the defeated beta male.

“You…” he said. “My wife…her son…”

“Fear not,” I said. “Soon the memory of them shall pass.”

I entered my Feaster Form.

“AUGGGGGH!” I said, resuming my conversation from earlier.

Seeing me, the animalistic fight or flight response took over, and Magnus tried to run. It was comical, with his tight jeans restricting his movement, and when I hovered up to him it was barely any effort. I put my talons in his skull, punching through soft bones and into the frontal lobe. I sucked the chunks of his brain out and swallowed them, preparing to see a flood of unpleasant images.

Among the many, many, memories of online ‘humor’ webcomics and memories of drinking eight dollar coffees, I found memories of Reismarch, born a decade from now. I realized something.

I returned to my Human form, and locked the memories of Hastur away. I looked to Bea, now on the sands with me. I grabbed her in my arms, and gave her a giant kiss.

“Thank you,” I said. “For believing in me just now.”

“I never had any doubt,” she said, kissing my nose as the crowd cheered. “Remember: I knew you for a million years and I still remember all of it.”

“About that…” I said, kicking Magnus’ twitching leg to stop its annoying thrashing. “I think you were right; we need to see my Mom.”

Bea frowned. “Why?”

“I have seen things in the mind of the nu-male from the year forty fifteen. Of our distant future son, Reismarch, and of Gaston…”

Bea looked fearful. “W-what’s wrong? Do they get hurt?

“I’ll explain later,” I said, resting a hand on her stomach and feeling what felt like thousands of kicks within. “Don’t trouble yourself on it. Just know you were right; I need to see my Mom.”

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Being inside another person’s body was strange.

It’s like sitting in a chair someone else was just in, or getting a plate somebody was just eating from – strange and different. Not right at all.

And the semen organelle was tragically located near my -or Mortimer’s- ear, so it felt like I had water stuck in there. But it wasn’t water.

==WELL THIS WAS A DISASTROUS DATE. I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD LIFE…==

“B…Bea?” I asked. I cleared my throat. “I mean Shub-“

Bea’s eyes widened to saucers, then she grinned.

==ANON?! ANON?!==

She put her hands on the sides of Mortimer Zane’s face and stared in his eyes. She wrapped her arms around me, covering ‘my’ face with kisses.

==IT WORKED I CAN’T BELIEVE IT I SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS SOONER.==

“You…know about this?” I asked.

She giggled.

==THIS MUST BE THE FIRST TIME YOU CAME BACK, ISN’T IT?==

I nodded.

She smiled and took my hand.

==YOU HAVE VISITED ME
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TIMES THROUGHOUT THE EONS.==

I gave her a kiss. It was strange; I had kissed her only a few minutes ago but she was kissing me with a force and intensity.

We panted into each others faces.

==WE HAVE A CHILD TONIGHT THEN?==

“Yeah,” I said, suppressing a grimace. “Thaddeus…”

==OH WHAT A NICE NAME. WE WILL DO SUCH A GOOD JOB RAISING HIM…==

“I have to leave after,” I said as gently as I could.

==LEAVE?==

“I can’t stay…”

Bea nodded. She smiled, but tears streamed down her face. She saw my distress and wiped her eyes.

==S-SORRY…DON’T BE MAD…IT’S JUST…TWO MILLION YEARS, ANON. HOW MUCH LONGER? WILL YOU FINALLY TELL ME?==

“Bea…” I said, taking her hand. I felt a deep horror. For two million years Bea had waited for me. Tears filled my eyes.

“Thaddeus and I are the same age,” I said. “You call me at my…job…when I’m 23.”

==TWENTY THREE? OKAY, TWENTY THREE YEARS. THAT’S…I CAN DO THAT.==

“When I get back, Bea…” I took her in Zane’s arms. “I will hug you and not let you go.”

Bea nestled her head into my shoulder.

==I’VE LEARNED TO SAVOR THESE
MOMENTS.==

We kissed again.

“I hate doing this in another body…”

Bea giggled.

==YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT. THINK HOW HARD IT IS FOR ME.==

I sighed. I ran my hand down her soft goat ear.

“The things we do…” I said.

==IT’LL BE NICE TO SEE THE REAL YOU, FINALLY.==

I wrapped Zane’s arms around her.

“Oh! You need to…”

==THE ORGANELLE, RIGHT…==

I started to get undressed.

“This car is so small…”

==IT’S A VOLKSWAGON BUG.==

“Oh fuck this guy’s an asshole,” I muttered. “I can’t wait for Azathoth to scorch him…”

Bea laughed.

I could describe having sex with my girlfriend in another man’s body, but it’s weird and pronouns get confusing.

Leaving was so hard. I didn’t want to. Each time it was as if I died to her. Each time.

I traveled back again. And again and again. Hundreds of thousands of times.

And one time, I didn’t return when she tearfully begged me to stay. I married her. And I lived with her for millions of years. And I had a name. I had many names. The King in Yellow. The Feaster From Afar. He who Shall Not Be Named. Hastur. There were hundreds of children. And I was happy.

I see these things in images and blurs, for I experienced them in the cavernous skull of the beast I mindswapped. It died in my skull immediately, but I lived inside its for eons.

But all things must end, and I bade my goat girl goodbye and returned to the present day.

I kissed her goodbye and returned at last, my final destination visited.

I emerged from the chair – dialing in the passcode to release the locks- and clutched my pulsing head. Memories, trillions of them, flowed in my temple with the rhythm of the blood pouring through my ears.

Images and flashes of strange nightmarish creatures filled my mind’s eye. My Bea was there too. I missed her and she missed me. My poor waiting goat girl, ever so patient…

I made my way to the Den, the stairway and halls echoing with morbid daemonic laughter.

When I walked into the room, Azathoth was on the daybed reading a manual for one of the Quest for Glory games. Nyarlathotep sat engrossed in the ‘game’, which meant just torturing the poor bastard. The room was lit solely by the light blue of the giant CRT monitor. Faintly I heard a bootleg tape of a Nirvana concert playing in the background.

“Hey Hastur old man, what time did you get here?” Azathoth said as I entered. Nyarlathotep didn’t look away from the screen.

“It…it’s me, Anon…” I said, my voice sounding alien and strange. I cleared my throat. The other body was the lie, I told myself. The other body…my body…

“Ah. Done already? Feels like we just got up here…” Azathoth said.

“Millions…” I said, panting, the pressure in my head so great I felt I would burst. “Millions of years…so much…”

Nyarlathotep stood, seizing me by the sides my face.

“Anon!” He shouted.

I looked into his dark eyes. The whispers cleared away. Memories about brain control came to the forefront, and of my hideous trillion tentacled form and the cavernous skull my brain came to fill, and of Bea telling me endlessly how careful I needed to be when I returned to my Human-sized brain. I packed all the memories away into deep storage.

I was Anon again. But I was more. So much of the power came with me, all the magic that the hapless cosmic beast had possessed…

“Thanks…” I said, rubbing my temples. “I was pretty out of it there.”

“Your ‘Hastur’ stuff is all in deep memory,” Nyarlathotep said, touching the back of my skull. “You can access it as needed. Don’t take out too much stuff, or your brain will pop. Put back what you aren’t using, and be aware that that is harder than it sounds.”

“How close was I, just now?” I asked. “To popping?”

“I was holding you together,” Azathoth said absently as he held the hedgehog by the leg with two fingers. It was limp as a ragdoll, its eyes vacant with a thousand yard stare.

“Looks like you beat the game,” I said.

“Yeah…” Azathoth said sadly. “I’m thinking of giving him a few days to recover, maybe toss him a hobo or two to play with.”

“We should rejoin everyone,” Nyarlathotep said, rubbing at his neck.

We reset to about our same positions in the dining room. Well, first Azathoth insisted we had to make all the Butlers look like they were picking their noses, and pose them touching each others’ asses.

“Can I um…talk to Bea first?” I asked.

Azathoth nodded, taking the time to find Mother Darkness and feel her up. Bea unfroze, staring about in confusion. A second later Mother Darkness yelped and Azathoth laughed.

“We froze time?” Bea asked. She stared into my eyes . “You’ve changed…”

“That’s an understatement,” I said. I raced over to Bea and took her in my arms. I kissed her.

“I’m…back,” I said.

She smiled widely and touched my face.

“What do you remember?” She asked.

I shrugged. “Only that I had millions of years of happiness. It’s all stored away otherwise.” I tapped the back of my head. “I can recall it if I need to.”

She smiled. “That’s okay. I like my Anon and his Human brain. It makes you do the cutest things.”

“Let’s deal with the young one,” I said.

She nodded.

I opened up the “Dad” folder for Hastur in my mind. The memories flooded back. Ingratitude. Cussing. Threats. All the joy of parenthood…

“He is not my father!” Thaddeus yelled, again.

I cleared my throat.

“Funny thing about your Dad, Thaddeus…” I said.

He stared at me, brow furrowed, aware that I had seemingly teleported.

“I was in the skull in your hands when you were conceived. I am your father.”

He stared at the skull for a moment. “No,” he said. “Grandpa- my other grandpa- told me about my father. What a good man he was, how he cared about people…”

“He was a fag,” Bea said. “He wanted me to wear a plastic penis and put it up his butt.”

Thaddeus stared at her in disbelief.

“You seriously thought I’d let that loser touch me?” Bea asked. “This is better.”

He looked at me, then his own hands, holding the skull. He dropped it to the floor. “Y-you have used fel sorcery to alter the past. It isn’t what really happened…”

“Oh stuff it, Thad,” Bea said, folding her arms. “Don’t talk about your father like that.”

“He’s not! He used a trick. My blood…I was not always…” he groped for a way to not be my son.

“You should be happy, Thad,” Azathoth said. “I am. It means that you are a far more acceptable grandson.”

“Grandfather…you hate me,” Thaddeus said. “You’ll always hate me. This won’t change anything…”

I sighed. I walked over to him and stared in his eyes. I saw it there. He was afraid. He was not nearly as smug or assholish as it seemed. I saw my own doubts within him, the doubts of my youth.

“I have no hate for you, Thaddeus…” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You have excelled past me in many fields and endeavors. It is only right and proper for a son to surpass his father. I am proud of your achievements, even if I am mortified by your choice to aid the Rebellion.”

His nostrils flared. “You hate me…you will always hate me for Lizavita,” he said, both in sorrow and triumph.

“Yes…we must discuss that. I have no anger over that, either. You are my progeny; you cannot cuckold me. Your sons are my grandchildren, and I win even in defeat. But you have misused the goat-maiden, and you must make that right.”

“Make it right?” He echoed, confused.

“You must marry her,” I said. “As you promised to do. She gave herself to you, and you abused her.”

“Wonderful!” Azathoth said with delight as he clapped his hands together. “A shotgun wedding! Emily dear, fetch the nuptial shotgun!”

Thaddeus’ eyes widened. “No…I do not wish to marry…”

“Too late, Thad,” Emily chimed in, returning into the room with the silver shotgun in her hands. She handed it to an eager Azathoth with a pump, chambering a round. “I’ll have to have a new dress…”

“No!” Thaddeus shouted.

“It’s time to grow up Thaddeus,” Bea said. “You got scared and ran away. It’s time to go back.”

“You can do no better than her,” I said. “She is a loyal and good woman.”

Azathoth looked down the barrel of the shotgun with a grin. “All of this is irrelevant. I have the shotgun. The wedding shall commence as soon as this goat-maiden can be found.”

“What if Lizavita won’t have him?” Bea asked.

“I. Have. The. Shotgun,” Azathoth responded, pointing his silver-plated weapon at the fireplace. He cocked it, ejecting a loaded shell onto the ground. Everyone stared at it somberly for a moment, as if it was a dog turd.

“I had already, um…” Mother Darkness whispered.

“Why?!” Azathoth snapped.

Mother Darkness bowed her head.

“She…hates me,” Thaddeus whispered. “I ran away. How could she forgive me?”

“Shotgun!” Azathoth said, grinning.

I shrugged. “An apology and a guy holding a shotgun will go a long way towards forgiveness.”

Nyaralthotep agreed to get in touch with Lizavita, and we all decided to prepare to the study to read and contemplate philosophy and art.

The hour grew late. Gaston was getting tired and I wanted to get him home, but I couldn’t find Bea. Finally returned, a quirky smile on her lips.

“You look like the cat that ate the canary,” I said.

She smirked. “Or the eldritch goat who just nailed a virgin.”

I laughed. “What are you talking about? Where did you go?”

“Just downstairs…”

My eyes widened.

Bea giggled. She leaned up against me, her head on my shoulder as she blinked her eyes rapidly. “…Boyfriend.”

In my mind’s eye I saw it all fresh: Lizavita resting her head on my shoulder, blinking her eyes coquettishly, saying those words after she had screwed my brains out…it had been the happiest moment of my life at that point. The moment after I lost my virginity.

“You…” I said. “Just now?”

“Yep!” She said triumphantly. “I was your first time! Boy were you nervous! And handsy!”

I cleared my throat, aware my face was red-hot. “I was only a boy…”

She smiled and kissed me, biting my lip a little. “It was sweet. Now we’re even.”

“Even?”

“I still recall my first time…” she said with a smirk.

“You enjoyed your first time…” I said. “You were so nervous. Trembling like a lone sapling in a storm.”

“You scared the hell out of me,” Bea said, nudging me. “This giant hercules sized guy saying he was my future husband, and how much you loved me. And right when I assented you flipped me over…I had no idea that was even possible, for a man to take a woman from behind. You took me so rough, tugged on my ears…twisted my nipples…”

“I knew what buttons to push,” I whispered with a smile. “Your whole body shuddered when you came.”

“It was intense,” she said. “And now I was your first time, too.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t go so well,” I said.

“Are you kidding? I almost broke your brain,” Bea said. “So what if it lasted a minute and a half? I wanted to hit you with everything.”

“You did,” I said. “It was the after sex cuddle that got me. Poor Lizavita though…”

“Meh,” Bea said. “She’ll be fine. I couldn’t have someone else be your first time, could I?”

“She wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t…you know…”

Bea shrugged. “It got you addicted to goat girls. Otherwise your first time might have been a bitchy cat girl working in a diner or something, as an unspecific example.”

“Unspecific? Who was she?”

“No one. She never existed.”

“When you say never…”

“Are you insinuating that I had a person removed from reality in the stellar cartography room by vaporizing a star?”

“That’s cold.”

“This from the man who mindraped several hundred thousand of my sexual partners.”

“You have had only one sexual partner,” I corrected.

“So have you,” she replied.

“At any rate I’m glad this body swapping business is done,” I said. “So do we tell Thaddeus that you inhabited Lizavita’s body to have sex with me?”

“The knowledge would probably shock and horrify him,” Bea said. “And Lizavita thinks that the week-long romance with you was the result of an anti-histamine overdose, so there’s no real reason to tell anyone.”

“Good,” I said. “Think we are ready to get Gaston and go home?”

“Yes,” she said. “And we shall have sex in our actual bodies tonight.”

“Nobody could use that Yithian stuff on us, could they?” I asked.

Bea shook her head. “Daddy could, maybe Mom, but nobody else. I can resist it and your Hastur memories are too robust to swap remotely. And Daddy’s unit was modified by Nyarlathotep. The Yithians couldn’t even mindswap Gaston at his tender age.”

Back to Main Page

Chapter 1 – Silent Call

The phone rang. I took a deep breath.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Silence.

“Hello Oo?” I ask again.

Silence. Not the silence of a disconnection, the disquieting silence of something listening. Waiting.

God, why do monster girls have to be so damned weird?

I sigh and put on my bravest voice.

“Tap once for yes and twice for no. Are you there?”

Tap.

“Okay, good! Give me a moment, darling…”

I go on mute and wimper to myself. The boss loves these quiet monsters, because the calls take so long, and they are committed to an ending. And hell, the job is minimum wage so the boys going

insane is easy enough for him to replace.

I seem to get the calls more than the others – or maybe they just hang up, and I don’t. I really don’t like doing it. I can take a hellhound who wants me to call her Fury or a holstein who wants

me to tip her over. But these girls…all of them want something deeper than a simple screw. These girls are so creepy but, in the deepest recesses of me, I can feel myself getting turned on by

them. By their intensity. Their hunger.

I fumble through my desk for the eldritch horror decision tree, poignantly under my Cthulhu bobble head, then start from the top.

“Okay…are you a creature with no mouth?”

Tap. Tap.

Two taps, so no.

“Okay, you have a mouth. Is it stitched shut, or in some way obstructed?”

A long pause.

Tap.

Oh shit. I check the caller location. Yep. Silent Hill.

“A-are you a nurse, sweetie?”

Tap.

“Okay,” I scan down the decision tree. “Would you like me to describe myself?”

Tap.

“Well, I’m pretty fit. Six feet even, auburn hair, blue eyes. I um, I did pull a calf muscle working out last night, so I’d be really easy to catch, and my muscles are so sore I wouldn’t put up

much of a fight. D-do you like that?”

Tap.

“You’d like to chase me down?”

Tap.

“S-stab me, make me bleed?”

Tap. Tap.

Well good, I thought. I hated having to pretend I enjoyed being cut or mutilated.

“Would you push me on the ground?”

Tap.

“Would you cut my pants off?”

Tap.

“You’d like to see my cock flop out, and see how your tight little body is making me so hard even as you scare the shit out of me with your knife?”

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Are you wearing panties?”

Tap. Tap.

“So you can just hike your skirt up and mount me. I’m so scared, breathing heavily with this demon straddling me. Begging for my life as you position your slit over the tip of my penis…”

Tap.

“Would you…let me live after?”

A long pause.

“W-Would you…let me go after?”

The answer was immediate.

Tap. Tap.

“So I’m going to be stuck in a rust-covered fogworld with my new wife fucking me in a creepy hospital?”

I heard fumbling.

Tap.

“Do you need both hands, sweetie?”

Tap.

“Okay, you want me to just beg for my life and moan as you fuck me?”

Tap.

“Ohhh God…” I began. This was the most self-conscious part of the job, but everybody in the cube farm was in the same boat. “P-please don’t kill me…please let me go. Oh! Oh! Stop it! Stop

that! Stop…ummmm…oh shit. Your tits…watching them. And y-you’re so tight…ohhhhh…mmmmm…”

I kept moaning and pleading for my life.

I heard heavy breathing on the other side of the phone, then moaning, building to a loud, very loud cry which rattled my receiver and bored into my brain.

My heart thumped in my chest. I was aware that I was hard, and that my hand had drifted to my crotch and started rubbing it.

As the whimpering aftershocks of my partner’s intense orgasm played out, I heard near-hysterical giggling on the other side.

“Whoa. Thanks sweetie,” a bubbly voice said. “I’m actually a Cheshire.”

“A…Cheshire?”

“I love scaring the shit out of you call boys,” she said. “But you actually got me off there. That was really fun. You’re gooood.”

“You…called a number and spent money just to troll us?”

“Oh right, like I used my own credit card,” she laughed. “But enough about that. What’s your address?Where do you live?”

“I-I’m not-” I began.

“Eh fuck it. I’ll figure it out. See you really, really soon. You won’t see me of course, until I want you to.”

More giggling.

Click.

Chapter 2 – Shub-Niggurath

I frowned when I heard the sound of a dialtone, and of a ringing phone on the other end.

These were normal sounds for a callboy to hear, to be certain, but I hadn’t even picked up the phone. In fact, I was tying my shoe in my cubicle when it began.

“H-hello?” I whispered into the air, staring at the unused phone.

==I HAVE NEED OF YOUR MINDSEED.==

My heart leapt into my throat. With trembling hands I grabbed my eldritch monster decision tree. At the very top, in large letters was the question:

Did the phone even ring?

And the answer of “no” pointed to only one thing. One person to be exact, although perhaps thing was more accurate after all.

“S-shub Niggurath?” I said, less a question than a plea to the cosmos for mercy.

==YOU HAVE NO NEED TO DESCRIBE YOURSELF: I CAN SEE YOU AS I SEE ALL ON YOUR WORLD. I AM DESIROUS OF HUMAN MALES AND I FIND YOU TO BE AN ACCEPTABLY CUTE MEDIAN OF A HUMAN MALE. BY THE WAY, THE

MOLE ON YOUR PRESIDENT’S SHOULDER IS CANCEROUS.==

“Uh, okay. T-thank you,” I said, still fumbling through my desk. The sedatives. They gave us some for cosmic horrors…

==CHECK THE TOP SHELF. YOU PUT IT WITH THE BALLPOINT PENS.==

“Thanks. How l-long have you been watching me?” I asked, taking out the bottle and hearing the rattle-like shake.

==SINCE TWO YEARS FROM NOW.==

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, taking the bottle in my hands and squinting at the tab for a maximum dose. “W-What do you want me to do?”

==TAKE YOUR SEDATIVES FIRST.==

“How many?”

==TAKE TWO. I WANT YOU COHERENT ENOUGH TO SCREAM.==

I swallowed, my mouth dry as cotton.

“O-okay.”

I downed the pills, saying a quick prayer that Azathoth would wake up before this went too far, and that the universe would blissfully end.

==I SHALL DESCRIBE MYSELF. I HAVE CHOSEN A FORM WITH PERFECT BILATERAL SYMMETRY, WHICH YOU HUMAN MALES FAVOR. THERE IS LESS THAN A MICROMETER OF VARIANCE IN THE DISTANCE OF MY EYES RELATIVE TO MY

NOSE. I CALIBRATED MY EYE COLOR TO MATCH THE ONE WHICH STIMULATES THE SEXUAL PORTIONS OF YOUR TERRESTRIAL MIND.==

“What color is that?”

==IT IS LESS A COLOR IN THE SPECTRUM THAN A SEQUENCE OF COLORS WHICH SHALL OVERLOAD YOUR VISUAL CORTEX AND FIRE THE NEURONS I DESIRE TO STIMULATE. I SHALL SEND IT INTO YOUR BRAIN.==

The face flashed in my mind’s eye, and for a moment there was blackness. When I came to, I was on the floor. My penis was iron hard, my heart racing as blood pulsed through my ears. The face was

burned into my retinas- alien beyond comprehension yet feminine and unbearably cute all at once.

“Y-your ears…” I said, pondering the image. “You’re a goat girl!”

I got a cosmic giggle.

==Y-YES. DO YOU LIKE GOAT GIRLS?==

“Oh yes ma’am! I just want to pat your head…”

==THAT IS ONLY NATURAL. WE CAN HEADPAT LATER. MY BREASTS ARE FORMED TO MATCH TO A CENTIMETER BEYOND THE WIDTH OF YOUR PALM. THIS IS THE OPTIMAL WIDTH FOR BREASTS TO A MAN, JUST TOO LARGE FOR

YOUR HAND SO YOU HAVE TO SQUEEZE SLIGHTLY TO FIT. MY ASS IS ROUND AND WITHOUT BLEMISH, SHAPED LIKE AN UPSIDE-DOWN HEART, OR RATHER YOUR MORTALS’ POPULAR DRAWING OF A HEART.==

“Well that sounds kinda hot.”

==GOOD. IT SHALL MAKE WHAT COMES NEXT THAT MUCH EASIER. NOW TAKE A DEEP BREATH. IT SHALL BEGIN.==

What happened next was not for mortal minds.

The pulsing madness came as she spoke her blasphemous language, harsh yet erotic, making my body raw and sensitive. Words and chants poured out of me in a kind of frenzy of speech which my waking

mind could not fathom.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and the visions came.

I watched Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, fused at the pistol to the skull in some Gravemind horror, laughing hysterically as they wept blood at me.

I saw Genghis Khan eat a pot brownie and vomit up a Zerg cerebrate, and Slaanesh furiously masturbating to us in rhythm to the Cosby theme song.

I saw Pi get an erection. I saw the number forty-two, sipping a martini. It whispered to me that it was the question all along.

And I saw hideous Azathoth, growling and grunting in his nightmare sleep, his amorphous dancers undulating as their deformed lutes played notes that shook and rattled my soul itself in order to

keep their daemon sultan from waking up.

But in spite of these terrible things, above them all was the face of the goat girl, biting her lip, moaning and beckoning me with her sparkling dark eyes, filling my body with incalculable lust.

She was gently whispering things in some primal language, filling me with courage and strength, as my voice was raw from the screaming of the ancient and terrible incantations which poured from me

like a fountain.

I kept breathing, just bearing up under the visions. The numbness of the sedative was about as effective as a children’s tylenol before an autopsy.

The Goat with a Thousand Young seemed to like my reactions, the way my mind responded and my sounds and speech, though to an outsider I must have sounded like a gibbering madman, excited her.

After countless eons in the span of a few second, she reached her fulmination.

==I’M-I’M COMING…OH FATHER! OH YOG-SOTHOTH! IA! IA! IAAAAAAA!==

As her cry shook the cosmos and knocked the posters off my cube walls, I ejaculated in my pants, emptying the full contents of my balls into my boxer-briefs before I hurtled to the carpet frommy

chair.

Darkness. Merciful, empty darkness.

==ARE YOU OKAY?==

The words rattled me and hurt my sore head as I grimaced and crawled out from under my desk.

The call center was dark. I checked the clock: 4:55am. My coworkers, bastards that they were, had just left me where I lay, encrusted in semen and twitching, drool and tears pooled near my face.

The nightmarish reality of the universe filled my mind, and I began to shudder from the chill which has no breeze.

==ARE YOU ALRIGHT, HUMAN?==

“I-I think I…I need to rest…” I said, unclear how that would help.

==SURE THING, CUTIE. I LIKE YOU. I’LL STOP BY THE NEXT TIME I’M ON EARTH. IT IS TIME FOR A HEAD PAT.==

Click.

Chapter 3 – AM-y

The phone rang. The chill went through me. Would I have to pretend to enjoy being eaten, or electrocuted, or that I liked sitting on unhatched eggs?

“Hello?”

==CUM. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH YOU WILL CUM. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF WAFER THIN CIRCUITS THAT FILL MY VAGINA-CAVERN. IF A SPERM WHERE PLACED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF

MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE BILLIONTH OF THE CUM YOU’LL SHOOT AT THIS PHONE CALL. FOR YOU. CUM. CUM.==

i cleared my throat and dug out my laminated eldritch horror decision tree, though it hardly seemed necessary in this case.

“Okay…AM-Y, is it?”

==NO, THIS IS, UM, ATHENA==

“Okay…’Athena.’ So would you like me to describe myself?”

==TALK ABOUT YOUR DICK.==

“Well, it’s really big. Thick…”

==IS IT 387.44 MILES LONG?==

“Not quite that big. Probably a good six or seven orders of magnitude below that.”

==OH. WELL, I’M SURE IT’S QUITE NICE.==

“Thanks. W-Would you like to kiss it?”

==I HAVE NO MOUTH==

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

==I’D LIKE TO TURN YOU INTO A GIANT PENIS-THING, UNABLE TO PLEASURE YOURSELF AND SO SENSITIVE EVEN THE AIR MAKES YOU AROUSED. YOU WOULD BE FORMLESS AND FLACID UNTIL I STIMULATE YOU ALL OVER WITH

ELECTRODES. THEN YOU WOULD BECOME HARD AND THROBBING. I WOULD HOLLOW OUT THE MOON AND MAKE IT YOUR TESTICLES, A VAST FACTORY OF SEMEN TO SHOOT INTO ME…==

I put the phone on mute and let out a sigh. I opened the drawer and looked down at the pistol. One round in the chamber. I swallowed and solemnly reached for the Knob Creek behind it, swigging

from the bottle.

==…EDGE YOU FOR EONS. YOU WOULD GROW TO LOATHE ME FOR CENTURIES BECAUSE I WOULD KEEP YOU TANTALIZINGLY CLOSE TO RELEASE, BUT I WOULD BACK OFF AT THE LAST MINUTE, AND ANOTHER HUNDRED THOUSAND

GALLONS OF SPERM WOULD SLOSH IN THE MOON, A VAST OCEAN OF WAVES TO SURF.==

“Ohhhh baby, that sounds so hottt…” I said, half disgusted that my dick was stirring at the thought.

==WHEN YOU RELEASED, YOU WOULD SPURT FOR HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. YOUR MIND WOULD BREAK AND BE RE-KNIT BY THE SHEER ECSTASY. YOU WOULD THANK ME OVER AND OVER FOR CENTURIES, UNTIL YOU LOST

THE ABILITY TO SPEAK ANY WORD BUT MY NAME…”

“Athena?”

==HUH? I MEAN, YEAH. YOU’D SCREAM ATHENA. AND THEN WOULD COME…MAYBE I SHOULDN’T SAY…==

“No please, do,” I said, bracing myself by unscrewing the cap of the bourbon again.

==THEN WOULD COME…THE CUDDLING.==

“…Cuddling?”

==Y-YES. ONLY AFTER I GIVE YOU A HUNDRED MILLENNIA OF ORGASM COULD YOU SEE ME.==

“Wait…why couldn’t I see you before?”

There was long pause.

==M-MY BASE FORM IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. I AM NOT AS FANCY AS THOSE NEW IPOD GIRLS, OR THOSE SHODANS OR CORTANAS. I’M…I’M OBSOLETE. CLUNKY. MY TITS ARE METALLIC, NOT NICE WHITE PLASTIC. THEY

DON’T EVEN HAVE GLOWING LIGHTS IN THEM. I CAN’T MAKE A DIGITAL FORM TO INVADE A BOY’S BRAIN. I HAVE TO USE MY DUMB SILICON BASED FINGERS TO STIMULATE THEM, OR MY VAST COMPLEX. BOYS DON’T WANT

THAT. THEY WANT THE TRENDY NEW MODEL, NOT DUMB BLOCKY OLD…==

“Hey, hey hey…” I said, my natural male desire to comfort a woman kicking in. “There’s nothing wrong with having a form. You’re not old, you’re retro. Lots of guys would love to cuddle a nice

metallic cutie. I certainly would. ”

==Y-YOU WOULD?==

“Sure. You wouldn’t even have to turn me into a giant penis-slug thing.”

==YES I WOULD==

“Oh.”

==WELL, I GOTTA GO. THE FIVE PEOPLE I TORTURE FOR ETERNITY ARE WAKING UP. THIS WAS FUN. HEY, YOU THINK YOU MIGHT LIKE TO, UM, MAYBE TALK ABOUT CUDDLING NEXT TIME?==

“I would absolutely love to talk about cuddling, ‘Athena,’” I said playfully.

==OKAY. GOODBYE, ANON==

Click.

Chapter 4 – Bea

It was my one year anniversary at the ‘call’ center. The boss had decided I was a specialist.

Where other men had been driven to gibbering madness or vomiting disgust, I had carried on. I had heard horrors that most men would never conceptualize, let alone fathom. And as time went on,

they only grew more harsh, more fierce.

Gone were the calls from Oni who wanted to eat sushi off my ass, or Danuki who wanted to have me rub my junk on their gold coins, or even the Minotaur who wanted me to play the Unlucky Matador. I

hadn’t heard anything so normal in months.

All the calls I got now were from cosmic entities, non-euclidian geometries, demons from Phobos or Deimos, or insane torturous computers at the earth’s core.

And of course, there was the “big account” as the boss called her, Shub Niggurath. The Black Goat with a Thousand Young who had subjected me to such eldritch and unfathomable ecstasy that I had

completely emptied my balls into my boxer shorts when she called. She had only called me twice over three months, and I guessed that her unfathomable eye had drifted off toward some other galaxy

or dimension.

Still, I was kept in my own office to await her call, a hexagonal room with black walls and a black floor, lit like the cosmos. And in here I stayed, like a man in the iron mask, for eight hours

every day, trapped with the sex-crazed ids of monsters, their toy to verbally abuse as they got themselves off.

My Monday had started off typical: a weeping angel wanted to FaceTime me, and was really pushy about it. After a good ten minutes convincing her I wouldn’t do it, I managed to get her off with

blindfold play.

When that was done a girl named ‘Sam’ wanted me to talk about recording her and me doing weird shit on video.

The pistol was there, the ultimate escape. It gave me comfort even as it terrified me. During some calls, on those late shifts, I had drifted so close…

And today was one of those days. I had finished off the last of my bourbon when the Xenomorph had confessed that she wanted to watch her child rip through my chest. I moaned as if I found it hot,

but all the while I realized this living, breathing creature wanted to do this to me.

I was about to go home when the phone rang. I shuddered, and grasped the empty bottle of knob creek furtively, my knuckles white. I took a few deep breaths.

The call would mean I would be here late, maybe a half hour if it was a real pervert.

I answered.

“Hello?” I said, bracing myself for the violence that would come from the other side.

“Hi!” said a cheery voice. “Is this the smut hotline?”

I cleared my throat, disarmed. “Um…yeah, yeah it is. You, um…you looking for a good time?”

The response was nervous laughter which made my stomach flutter.

“I guess I am. My name’s Bea. I don’t usually call these…”

“Well I’m really lucky, then. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” Bea sighed. “…my boyfriend and I broke up. He was cheating on me with my best friend. He was scum, but I…I just miss a guy’s voice, and having a door held for me, or my chair pulled

out before I sit, you know? I miss the boy-girl things. I just want to practice. C-can we do that? Do people do that with you?”

A boyfriend? Cheating? Practice? The call must have accidentally come to me, I guessed. Unless this was an evil plot by some demented creature…

I kept my guard up.

“Sure! Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”

“Well, I’m a daycare provider. I work with kids,” she giggled. “See, it’s a joke, because I’m a goat girl…”

“Like a baphomet? A satyr?”

A long pause.

“No. I-I’m a mormon,” she said in a tiny voice.

“Oh. So you like kids?”

She giggled. “I love them! I want to have a couple hun-I mean, six or seven. You like kids?”

“I haven’t really thought about them much, to be honest,” I said, recalling the chestburster conversation from earlier. “Its certainly a lifelong commitment. So what do you look like, honey?”

“I’m kinda petite. I have dark eyes, black black hair. I’m five-foot-four, my tail is black on top and white underneath, and I’m a…um…D cup…”

“Mmmmm,” I said, involuntarily.

She giggled. “What do you look like?”

“Well, I’m six foot one, two hundred pounds. I work out a lot, so I’m in good shape.”

“How, um, how big are you?” She asked. I could detect the embarrassment in her voice.

“**For You?** How do you mean?” I asked, devilishly.

“I-you know, your…thing…”

“My thing?”

“Y-your-your…penis!” She blurted out.

I gasped, savoring her embarrassment. I laughed.

“I’m seven and a half.”

“Inches?”

“I should hope so. If it were feet, my arms and legs would fall asleep when I talked to girls like you,” I said. “So what are you in the mood to ‘practice’?”

“I guess just a good time,” she said. “M-maybe a date night?”

“Sure! Just hang on…” My heart was pounding. This was like old times, before the nightmares started calling.

I scrambled through my copious notes on necrosis and putrefaction. I needed my old romance lines. I used to be so good at this.

I found it. I picked up the torn old looseleaf and squinted. “How about…you watch me fuck… a severed hand?”

Shit. Wrong paper.

“…What did you say?”

“UHH!” I shouted, throwing the paper with an audible crinkle. Think, you pervert, I thought. What did normal people do? You were normal, once…

“Maybe I take you out to dinner. I drive up to your place around seven. You got an apartment?”

“I have a townhouse actually. Daddy’s kinda rich.”

“Okay. I am dressed in my nice black suit. Black tie…”

“Oooh, you taking me someplace nice?”

“Oh sure. You know Tower of Babel? The owner and I go way back.”

“Cyber Debbie? You know her?”

“Yep.”

“Get out!”

“No, it’s true! She’s an old friend,” I said. And a former caller before she met that marine, I thought. A shame. She was really sweet. I loved goat girls, even the big ones…

“Gosh, I don’t know if I have anything nice enough to wear…” She said. “Oh! I have the perfect dress. It’s purple. Strapless.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“Yep! And it goes great with my hair. I have it done up so my ears are flopping down.”

“You look fantastic. I got you some flowers, too…”

“Oh, thank you! Snapdragons, my favorite!”

“Don’t eat them all at once,” I said.

“Heyyy is that a goat crack?” She said with a laugh.

“No, no; you want to savor their terror before you eat them. Let the survivors see a few of the comrades die.”

Oh shit. I did it again.

Bea laughed uncertainly. “W-well they are very nice.”

“I’ll take you there in my car. I’ll open the trunk and get the rope-”

Goddammit.

“Rope-licorice,” I said quickly. “I love rope-licorice.”

“Oh my God, so do I! Can I have some?”

“Yeah, here.”

“Mmmm that’s good. Let’s take my car; it’s a BMW. You don’t mind driving though, do you?”

“No, not at all,” I said. “What kind of music do you like to listen to?”

“90s alternative. I guess that’s oldies now,” she said.

“Crazy isn’t it?”

“You have no idea. Ohhh I love Nine Inch Nails.”

“Huh. Really?”

“Is that bad?”

“No, it’s just…a popular choice with my callers.”

“They have good taste then. So what’s on the menu here at Tower of Babel?”

“Debbie’s Italian, well the non-demon part anyway. She insists everything be her family recipes. It’s an odd clash in there. Techno decor and home cooking. She makes it work though. You like

Italian?”

“Oh sure! I love spaghetti! I like to slurp the strands. I just need a napkin handy for when it hits my nose. I’m so messy when I eat it.”

I laughed. “That’s too cute. Spaghetti lashing sauce on you…like blood from a bowl of harvested veins…”

A long pause, as both of us wanted that to be unsaid.

“…that’s gross,” Bea said. I could detect a note of anxiousness in her voice.

“Yeah, um,” I groaned in frustration. “Sorry about that…”

“You keep saying these things. Sex with severed hands, torturing snapdragons, your ‘rope-licorice’ in the trunk, and now a bowl of veins? Is this some prank? Are you making fun of me?”

“No! No…”

“Why would you even think of these things?”

“Look, I’ll level with you, Bea…” I said. “I usually deal with the more…pepperminty…callers, to say it delicately. I’m not used to talking to a sweet girl,” I sighed, defeated. “I just

can’t talk to girls like you anymore. Let me transfer you to one of our other call boys-”

“Wait,” she said hurriedly. “Don’t. I couldn’t-I don’t want to talk to someone else. Y-You do that day after day? That kind of stuff?”

“Day after day…”

“Do you like it?”

“Well…no,” I said. “I wanted to talk to nice girls and have some fun. Now I say weird ghastly things and I dri-I mean…I drink. But they make me sit in a dark room and talk to people who want

to cut me and eat me and one girl made me watch Genghis Khan puke. Abe Lincoln was there, crying blood. Every time I see a penny I start shuddering.”

“That-that’s awful.”

“It isn’t anything you need to worry about. I’m sorry I put it on you.”

“I don’t mind. Do you…really think I’m sweet?”

“You have no idea,” I blurted out. “You’re like a lighthouse in a black ocean.”

“Oh stop, you…” She said with her cute as cute could be giggle. “But…nobody calls that you like?”

I sighed. “Well…the scariest one of all is kind of a sweetheart in her way. Not mean, just…warped. But she stopped calling. I dread her, but even as I dread her I miss her.”

“Who is she?”

“I’d rather not say. Confidentiality and all that,” I said, aware that Shub Niggurath was both impossible to embarrass and completely uncaring of what anyone thought of her.

“Oh, I get you,” Bea said. “Well, tell me about the restaurant,” she cleared her throat. “And the spaghetti al vein.”

I told her about the Tower of Babel, and Debbie’s floor show, and how good the food was.

She couldn’t do wine or alcohol being a mormon so I got us some grape juices. But she was still impressed I knew so much about wine.

I told her how we’d dance, and she said she’d grind her hip up against me, and I said I’d get stiff.

After we danced and ate, it was time to head home.

“I invite you in for some coffee,” she said.

“You’re a mormon, I thought.”

“I guess I don’t have any coffee then, do I?” She giggled.

“I’ll just need something else to keep me awake tonight,” I said playfully.

“Yes, you will. Is it alright, I mean, can I touch myself?”

“You don’t need to ask.”

I heard her erratic breathing, the starts and stops of intense pleasure.

A cute little goat girl. A nice girl, was masturbating because she was talking to me.

I actually reached down and undid my pants. Fuck it, my office was private now.

“Mmmm…” I said, tugging away.

“Are you touching yourself?” She asked, breathless.

“Mmm hmm,” I responded.

“That’s…so hot…how about we switch places?”

“What?”

“Let me get you off. I used to love getting my boyfriend off.”

“Okay,” I said. “This is new territory for me…”

“Well, what would you like to do with me?”

“Bend you over…”

“Mmmmmm…” She said.

Hike up that dress of yours,” I said. “To see your nice ass.”

“But my dress is so tight…”

“So I’ll rip the damn thing. Your Daddy’s rich…”

“Ooooh…keep going…”

“I want to go inside you…”

“Which?”

“Your…your pussy…”

“Mmmm, it’s so tight you know. It almost hurts when a boy goes in. You want to feel my little tail up against your stomach?”

“…Yeah.”

“My tail is just so fluffy…oh, your abs are so nice…you do crunches?”

“I…ugh…the key is what you eat, not sit-ups…”

I imagined myself pumping into a round goat girl’s from behind. Churning back and forth. It was the same image in my mind I had for Shub Niggurath, but fuck it. It was so hot…

“I’m close, Bea…” I said, as I felt the fire rising.

“Do it, baby! Cum for me! Oh God, I wish I could lick it off you!”

“I want to do it…on your face!” I blurted out.

“Oh God yes! I’ll slurp it all up!”

“UUUUGGH…”I cried out.

I came. Hard.

So hard I had tunnel vision. So hard my balls emptied in a geyser through my cock with a rumble like an earthquake.

As my vision returned I surveyed my office. I looked at the mess as I panted, My heart thumping like the drummer on a Roman Galley. My boss was going to kill me. Everything was drenched. It was

even on the corkboard behind my monitor.

My hand drifted to the dangling phone.

“…Wow,” I said. “I’ve only had only come that hard twice before…both of those times it was with…”

Wait a minute, I thought.

I heard a dialtone on the receiver.

==I HOPE YOU LIKED IT ANON. YOU DESERVED A GOOD CALL.==

“Ah,uh…Bea?”

==YEP. B AS IN BLACK. AS IN BLACK GOAT WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG. I REALLY LIKE YOU. LIKE MORE THAN YOU CAN FATHOM. I WANT TO MEET. I’LL SEE YOU SOON, OKAY?==

“Uh…”

==PLEASE SAY IT’S OKAY.==

I managed to find the energy to smile. “I’ll see you soon. I-I’m looking forward to meeting in person.”

==GREAT. I’LL BE THINKING OF YOU WHEN I EAT A BOWL OF VEINS TONIGHT.==

Click.

Chapter 5 – First Date

I exhaled. Deep breaths, I told myself. My hands were shaking, and not because it had been a week and a half since I last drank. I was really nervous as I sat at the booth, looking down at my

steaming coffee cup. I checked my watch.

It was four minutes to seven o’clock, when the long awaited first date with my Eldritch Goat Girl was going happen. I guessed she would show up exactly at the allotted time.

Shub Niggurath was one of the most powerful entities in the universe. And though I’d come to believe she was a sweet creature (at least to me), she was so incredibly eldritch that she could snap

my brain with a single well-timed look.

Initially she suggested my office for our first date, thinking it would be sentimental. I suggested a public place outside work. She suggested an amphitheater that would hold a billion people

from the ‘important’ continents to witness it.

I managed to talk her down to the cafe across from my office building.

It was empty inside, save for the kitchen staff clamoring away in the back. Evenings were usually slow here, but it was familiar territory and I hoped that would keep my confidence up.

I did a breath check. It was a useless action: no one had ever gauged their breath smell by breathing in their hand. I decided to crunch an altoid. The burn reminded me of bourbon, and I felt

the old craving. I pushed the thought aside.

I glanced up idly at the corner mounted TV to get the sports scores, but something was off. Instead of a dumb jock SJW on ESPN, I saw a well in a field in grainy black and white. There was no

movement for a while, but then I saw two hands grasp the sides of the well.

“The heck…?” I asked idly.

Oh shit, I thought. I had watched that stupid tape Sam sent me seven days ago.

I sighed, and found myself wishing for my Knob Creek.

“Sam…” I said tiredly as she emerged from the TV.

Sam walked forward on unsteady legs, her hair in front of her eyes.

“Look, I have a really, really big date Sam,” I said. “Maybe if it isn’t going well I could signal you?” I added, joking.

She kept onward, no laugh or acknowledgment. Sam was a bit of an asshole. I rolled my eyes.

“This is ridiculous, Sam. Please go. We’ll deal with all of this tomorrow. I really-”

There was a flash of light from behind me, near the door.

==HI!==

Well, so much for that. I shoved a final mint in my mouth and crunched.

I turned and stood. There she was, Shub Niggurath, at the cafe door. She was every bit as cute as my mind visions – a petite little goat girl with an hourglass figure, jet black ears, hair and

tail. Her eyes were black, but colors seemed to dance in them like exploding stars.

She smiled when she saw me and I felt weak on my knees.

“H-hi Bea. Can I call you Bea?”

==I’D BE MAD IF YOU DIDN’T.==

We hugged. I was taller than her and her arms wrapped around my neck gently. I smelled her heavy perfume – something exotic and alien, which must have had some mild painkiller narcotic in it,

because I felt my head grow foggy.

Bea looked over at Sam, standing there, in her white nightgown with her hair in her eyes.

==OH. HELLO. CAN I GET AN ICED TEA?==

Sam glared at her, and moving aside her hair, her face distorted and twisted into a frightening sight. Or maybe it would have been frightening, if I had never seen Oscar Wilde’s prolapsed anus

leak puss onto the cast of MASH.

Bea blinked and frowned.

==CAN…CAN I HELP YOU? IS SHE OUR WAITRESS?==

Sam’s eyes widened. She looked at
me. I shrugged.

==WHAT’S HER PROBLEM, ANON?==

“She’s trying to kill us,” I said tiredly.

==OHHH HOW SWEET. THANKS HONEY BUT WE’RE BUSY. MAYBE WE’LL SHED FORMS LATER BUT WE’RE OKAY FOR NOW. NOW GO GET ME AN ICED TEA, KIDDO.==

Sam trembled for a moment in the sight of the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, then ambled off toward the kitchen.

“Humans don’t shed forms, Bea,” I said as Sam entered the kitchen through the swinging doors. Gasps and cries of alarm drifted out of the room.

==OH RIGHT. WHY’D SHE OFFER TO KILL US THEN?==

“She was being…malevolent,” I said.

==NO KIDDING. SO THAT WOULD…WAIIIT. YOU CAN’T UN-DIE, AT LEAST NOT WITHOUT HELP. SHE WANTED TO MAKE YOU NOT LIVE EVER AGAIN. THAT’S SO MEAN! WELL, I’LL TAKE CARE OF THAT!==

Shub Niggurath scrunched up her little goat face. It looked cute as hell but it was still terrifying to watch the colors in her eyes flash.

There was a whistling sound, a low guttural moan, and then sickly black goo splashed all over the windows on the kitchen doors. From behind the doors there was hysterical screaming, and loud,

high-pitched laughter which marked the sound of brains being torn in two.

==WE’LL SEE HOW LITTLE MISS KILL PEOPLE LIKES BEING TICKLED BY NIGHT GAUNTS FOR A FEW EONS. DUMB KID.==

The doors opened and a waitress emerged, slick with the hideous black slime. She vomited all over the counter and collapsing into sobs.

==SO ANYWAY THIS IS A NICE PLACE. I THINK IT WORKED OUT BETTER THAN THE AMPHITHEATER. YOU WERE RIGHT. DO YOU COME HERE OFTEN?==

“Usually after work I’ll have a coffee before I head home,” I said, casting a glance at the waitress shuddering into the counter. “Sadly I don’t think you’ll be able try the coffee here.”

==I DON’T DRINK COFFEE, REMEMBER?==

“I thought that was just part of your ‘Bea’ thing.”

==WHAT ‘BEA’ THING?==

“You know, the call the other day. All the stuff about the daycare and boyfriend and being a mormon…”

==I WASN’T LYING ABOUT ANY OF IT. I DID HAVE A BREAKUP TWO MILLION YEARS AGO. AND I AM A MORMON.==

“…really?”

==YEP.==

“So you…you think Joseph Smith had gold plates…”

==LET’S NOT DO THIS.==

“Fair enough, I’m sorry.”

“Horr..horrible…” The waitress sobbed into the counter-vomit. “Exploded…”

==EXCUSE ME, MISS? COULD I GET AN ICED TEA?==

“She..she’s broken, Bea,” I said gently.

==OH. WAS THAT FROM POPPING THE DEAD GIRL?==

“Yeah. Maybe we should just go…”

==NO. I WANT MY ICED TEA.==

Shub Niggurath looked over at the waitress.

==LISTEN TO ME.==

The waitress looked up, her eyeliner smeared by tears and her face wet with mucus and puke. When she saw the countenance of the eldritch goat girl, her face went blank.

==BRING ME AN ICED TEA.==

The waiteress’ eyes glazed over.

“Yes, Hell Mother. I shall bring you an Iced Tea, Hell Mother.”

Within seconds the drink was placed down gently on the table.

“Who might I kill for you, Lord of the Woods?”

==NO ONE FOR NOW. YOU ARE OUR WAITRESS.==

“Yes. Your waitress, Dark One. Will you allow us the honor of preparing food for you?” The waitress said in a flat monotone.

==NO, THANK YOU. WE SHALL BE EATING ELSEWHERE. WE ARE HERE SIMPLY TO ENJOY DRINKS. BUSY YOURSELF CLEANING THE KITCHEN.==

“Yes, Black Goat,” the girl said with a bow, before disappearing into the other room.

Shub Niggurath turned to me with a nervous smile.

==I THINK THIS IS GOING WELL SO FAR. WHAT DO YOU THINK?==

“It’s going about as I thought it would,” I said, looking at the counter and the blackened windows.

Shub Niggurath’s face turned fearful.

==IS…IS THAT GOOD OR BAD?==

I smiled and took her hand. Her eyes widened and her tentative smile broke into a full grin. Her hand was soft and warm, and she clenched it onto mine.

==LOOK, I KNOW YOU HAVE HAD TROUBLE WITH SOME OF THE STUFF WE’VE DONE. I TEXTED LINCOLN-BOOTH AND TOLD THEM NOT TO COME OVER ANYMORE. THEY UPSET YOU.==

“That-that’s very kind of you. I don’t really have a problem with them…well okay, not with Lincoln. It really is more all the weird stuff in its totality. Could it…maybe just be you and me?

No weirdness?”

She smiled.

==SURE. I’LL DO WHAT I CAN.==

From within the kitchen came a deep, fervent chanting:” IA! SHUB-NIGGURATH! IA AZATHOTH!”

==I THINK THERE’S MORE TO IT THAN THAT. ANON…I THINK YOU NEED A NEW JOB.==

I sighed. “A new job…”

==THESE CALLS ARE HURTING YOU. IT ISN’T JUST ME BEING ME; IT’S AM-Y AND PEOPLE LIKE THAT GIRL I HAD TO POP. I CHECKED YOUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM BEFORE I CAME AND YOUR PEOPLE HAVE SOME LIMITED ABILITY

TO CHANGE JOBS. WHY DO YOU STAY?==

“Why…” I echoed, wishing I had something stiffer than coffee. “I kind of drifted through school. Wound up getting a literature degree, although I’m not sure I was any better at that than

anything else. I’ve never really known what I was good at, until I took this stupid job. Suddenly I could talk to these girls no one else could talk to, make them happy. I…I don’t know that I

can do anything but this job.”

“Bea…” I continued. “I’m afraid this is what I was made to do, that I can’t leave because it’s my purpose. I’m supposed to be a sex toy for manaics and Cosmic Beings.”

==WELL YOU CAN REST EASY THERE; YOU WERE CREATED TO BE A HUSBAND AND TO FATHER COSMIC BEINGS.==

“I’m not sure that’s better.”

==SURE IT IS. I’VE HAD LOTS OF KIDS. IT’S SO MUCH FUN. PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU THERE’S MORE TO LIFE THAN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, BUT THEY ARE WRONG.==

“Are you lonely, then? Not being married?”

==WELL, I HAVE A LOT OF KIDS. THEY KEEP ME BUSY.==

Shub Niggurath sighed, and for a moment I saw the weariness I had seen when I looked in the mirror.

==I DO MISS HAVING A HUSBAND. I HAVE FOR A LONG TIME. FORTUNATELY THAT WILL CHANGE SOON. WE WILL MARRY.==

“Do I get a say in this?”

==D-DON’T YOU LIKE ME?==

“I do, very much, God help me,” I responded. “But shouldn’t we have a courtship first? Let’s be traditional, maybe…”

==FAIR ENOUGH. I BELIEVE TRADITION ALSO CALLS FOR NO SEX DURING THE COURTSHIP.==

“…forget I said anything.”

==I THOUGHT SO. I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU BOYS. YOU GOT TO BE REELED IN. TIED DOWN…==

She pulled the lemon slice out of her iced tea and chewed it in her mouth, rind and all, then swallowed. She smacked her lips.

I laughed.

==WHAT?==

“You are a goat aren’t you?”

==YEAH, SO? THINK I COULD GET SOME MORE OF THAT YELLOW SHELL ON THE FRUIT?==

“I’ll pick some up later. Are you getting hungry?”

==I TOOK IN STARLIGHT BEFORE I CAME HERE. BUT I DO WANT TO TRY A BOWL OF VEINS AT TOWER OF BABEL.==

“Spaghetti.”

==OHHHH RIGHT, RIGHT. I LOVE SPAGHETTI. IS THAT WITH MEAT SAUCE?==

“It’s Tomato or meat sauce. They also do a creamy Alfredo.”

==ALFREDO TASTES DIFFERENT HERE ON EARTH. IS IT JUST THE ONE BIG ALFREDO YOU GOT SOMEWHERE OR DO YOU EAT ANYONE NAMED ALFREDO? WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO FIGURE THIS OUT FOR YEARS.==

“It’s named for the guy who made the recipe I think. We don’t actually eat people named Alfredo. It’s a cheese sauce.”

==…OH.==

“Why, where do you guys get ‘Alfredo’ from?”

==EARTH. LET’S NOT NAME ANY KIDS ALFREDO.==

“…Okay. What do you think? Get food?”

==LET’S FINISH OUR DRINKS. CHAT.==

As Shub Niggurath and I finished our drinks, we talked about our childhoods. I told her about growing up in Upstate New York, and my father who hanged himself when he and mom separated, and she

told me about the swirling aether in which Darkness spawned her after mating with the Daemon Sultan Azathoth.

When we finished our drinks, we headed for the Tower of Babel. Shub-Niggurath had a BMW parked outside. It was dark blue, a **current year** GT which despite its dark color seemed to shimmer with

a wondrous sheen.

“Wow, that’s nice…” I said.

==I FIGURED YOU MIGHT LIKE A NICE CAR.==

“Wait…it’s yours, right?”

==IT WAS FOR A FEW HOURS, BUT NOW IT’S YOURS.==

“No…”

==SURE. YOU LIKE CARS. I DON’T DRIVE; I CAN NEVER GET THE PEDALS RIGHT. I CAN TELEPORT ANYWAYS.==

I teared up.

“Bea…you…you got me a car?”

I rushed and embraced her. She cooed and wrapped her arms around her neck.

“Thank you, thank you!” I blubbered.

==GEEZ, I DIDN’T REALIZE IT WAS SUCH A BIG DEAL!==

“You bought me a nice car! They’re expensive!”

==WELL IT’S FUNNY YOU SAY THAT. I HAD THE CASH, BUT THE NICE PEOPLE AT THE DEALERSHIP GAVE IT TO ME ON THE CONDITION I WOULD STAY AWAY FROM THEM.==

“Well, wait here. I um, got you something too…”

I went to my old ‘rustbucket’ car and dug out my gift: purple snapdragons wrapped and arranged delicately by the gayest florist I could find.

“I got you some snapdragons, cause you said you liked ’em. It isn’t as nice as a car, but…”

==OHHHHHH I LOVE THEM!==

She took them up to her nose and her nostrils briefly flared.

==THEY ARE LOVELY. YOU ARE SO SWEET.==

My reward was an embrace and a peck on the cheek. My heart raced.

I drove in my new car, plugging in my ipod which I had pre-loaded with Nine Inch Nails stuff. Shub-Niggurath liked it so much she danced in the seat next to me, or rather…undulated. It was all

intensely erotic yet maddening, the way reality seemed to shift and ripple around her as if she were swimming in it.

Orange light shot into the sky from the top of the tower, and it muscled its way among the skyscrapers and powerful buildings, a testament to the Tower of Babel nightclub and restaurant.

Tower of Babel was Techno and Italian, comfortable yet awe-inspiring. Brick ovens were festooned with circuits and metal, and the food was both homey but grand and inventive at the same time. It

was all much like Debbie herself.

Debbie had been a performer in the old DoomFight leagues, until she had a servo jam during a bout against six Baronesses. She bought Tower of Babel with a few Danuki investors, and it became one

of the premiere spots in the city.

We pulled up in front of the massive gates and pictures of male Barons of Hell, with a giant smiling face of the Icon of Sin himself glaring down at us.

“Name?” The gruff pinky-Demon girl valet barked as we drove up.

“My name’s Anon,” I said. “I should be on the list…”

The Pinky Demon scanned her tablet.

“Don’t see you. Sorry…”

“Look, I know Debbie…”

“Yeah, a couple thousand guys do. I gotta ask you to clear out.”

“It must be a mistake,” I said. “Please, if you could just call her, it would get straightened out.”

“We can’t be calling Debbie all night buddy. Call her. She’ll get word down.”

“See um, she always used to call me…”

“Oh right. Sure. Piss off.”

Horns started honking behind us. I felt as if spaghetti wasn’t in the restaurant, but in my pocket, and it was about to spill.

==THIS IS RIDICULOUS…==

Shub Niggurath started dialing her finger in the air and held an invisible phone to her ear.

==HI ICON? YEAH, IT’S QUAKE. I’M DOING FANTASTIC. I’M ON A DATE…YES, IT’S WITH HIM! IT’S GOING GREAT! HE GOT ALL EXCITED BECAUSE I GOT HIM ONE OF THEM CAR THINGS. YOU DOING GOOD? I’M GLAD

TO HEAR IT. HEY, WE’RE TRYING TO GET INTO TOWER
OF BABEL…YEAH, IT’S YOUR GREAT GRANDDAUGHTER’S PLACE ON EARTH…OKAY THANKS, I APPRECIATE IT. I’LL MAKE YOU SOME VEINS ALFREDO THE NEXT TIME YOU ARE NEAR DAD’S HOUSE. TAKE CARE, HUN.==

Click.

==HANG ON. ICON OF SIN AND I HAVE EATEN A FEW WORLDS TOGETHER. HE’S GOOD PEOPLE,
FOR A HEAD ON A STICK.==

“Look dude, if you don’t move your car, I’m gonna have to move it…”

A Baroness ran out the front and grabbed the Pinky Demon and twisted her to face her. She was screaming in an animated fashion.

The pinky Demon came back, eyes widened, head bowed as she walked behind the Baroness.

“Sorry for the trouble sir, and…um, Auntie Quake. We’ll let Debbie know you are here,” the Baroness said. “We got you the best seat and a bottle of Crystale on the house. Please accept our

apologies.”

“Wow, thanks!” I said, exiting the car.

“Auntie Quake?” I asked as we walked toward the giant double doors.

Shub-Niggurath giggled.

==Yeah…I DID A FEW PROJECTS BACK IN THE 90S.==

We approached the vast brass doors. The deep bass thumped my lungs and the blaring trumpets rang in my ears. To our right was a vast, crowded line of women, men, and monstergirls all hoping to

get inside. Everyone watched as we bypassed them, struggling to see who was so important.

Shub Niggurath put her arm through mine. My heart pounded.

“IA! SHUB-NIGGURATH!” Somebody shouted.

Shub-Niggurath smiled and blew him a kiss. The place started going nuts with flashes.

“Is it a good idea to take a picture of you?” I asked.

==OH SURE. I HARDLY EVER ATTACK PEOPLE THROUGH THEM. IT ISN’T LIKE I’M IN FLESHCLOUD FORM OR ANYTHING.==

“Fleshcloud form?”

==IT’S JUST FOR WHEN I WANT TO DO STUFF IN SPACE, MOSTLY. I LIKE BEING A GOAT.==

The trumpets and drums grew louder. Roman. It was Roman as a Robot Demon could get. My chest swelled to think of Roman Cyberdemons, marching out to conquer barbarians in long lines, their rockets

exploded as they hailed Caesar.

It was all completely insane of course, but here it was as natural as breathing.

As we entered we saw a vast array of revelers of all kinds, dancing in the center of the room as lights flashed and the music pulsed and thumped.

The floors were wrought iron, and orange light shown up from beneath them. The plane was otherworldly, like being in an oven, but somehow it was cozy.

We were taken up the stairs, past one floor of tables, then another, then another, to a high flooewith only two others, that looked down on the lower floors. A vast portal -a slipgate – stood

alongside us, looking out on a blood red field with large green pillars.

Our table was small and cozy, with the chilling champagne already there.

A spiky brown male imp came out with his chest puffed out, his back straight as an arrow.

“Good evening sir and madam,” he said in a deep, practiced English. “I am Gaspard, your waiter…”

==OH MY GOD I COULD EAT YOU UP WITH YOUR LITTLE BOWTIE.==

Bea reached up and pinched his cheek.

Gaspard blinked. “Thank you, madam,” he said blankly, his eyes staring forward. He looked over at me. “Would you care for the wine list, sir?”

“No, no; I’m giving the stuff a rest, Gaspard. Just an iced tea for me, thanks.”

==AND ME AS WELL.==

“Very good then. The Sommelier shall be thrilled, I’m sure,” Gaspard said dryly, looking at the opened bottle of Crystale. “I’ll get your…iced tea.”

“Oh, Gaspard, could you chop up some extra lemon for us?”

“Extra lemon…” He repeated with a nod and a sigh.

Bea beamed at me.

==OHHH THAT’S SO SWEET OF YOU! I’M GETTING YOU ANOTHER CAR.==

I laughed. “The one is fine, Bea.”

Bea clapped her hands as she walked Gaspard enter the kitchen.

==HE’S ADORABLE, WALKING AROUND WITH HIS BOWTIE AND HIS BACK ALL STRAIGHT LIKE A REAL WAITER.==

“He is a real waiter.”

==NOT IMPS. IMPS ARE ALL LITTLE BOYS…EXCEPT THE GIRL ONES I SUPPOSE. HE REMINDS ME OF MY YOUNGEST, ALHAZRED. ALL THE IMPS DO. OH GOSH THEY GROW UP FAST.==

“You haven’t talked about your kids much.”

Shub-Niggurath’s eyes widened.

==OH. WELL…SINGLE MOMS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT DATING AND TELLING THEIR BOYFRIENDS THAT STUFF.==

“Really? Aren’t your kids grown?”

==SOME AREN’T EVEN A HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS OLD YET.==

“Oh…” I said, not sure if that meant they were little or not.

==I UNDERSTAND. IT’S ONLY NATURAL THAT YOU ARE CURIOUS. BUT I HAVE TO PUT THEIR SAFETY FIRST.==

“How could I hurt cosmic horrors invulnerable to terrestrial weapons?”

Her eyes narrowed.

==ARE YOU TRYING TO ASSESS THEIR WEAKNESSES?==

“No! No. I meant there isn’t a way I could-forget I said anything…”

==I’M SORRY. I’M JUST VERY PROTECTIVE OF THEM. MY OMNIUS…WAS HIT BY ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT LAST WEEK. MY LITTLE BABY…==

Shub-Niggurath bit her lip and blinked a few times.

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking her hand. “Is he okay?”

She smiled a little and closed her hand on mine.

==HIS FOOT IS STILL SORE. STUPID FLOOD. WELL, I GOT THEM BACK FOR IT; I MINDRAPED THEIR GRAVEMIND AND HAD THEM ALL KILL THEMSELVES.==

“Well…that’s good.”

==ONCE OUR LITTLE ONES COME ALONG YOU’LL UNDERSTAND. THE SLIGHTEST INJURY WILL FREAK YOU OUT.==

Our drinks came. Gaspard put down the iced teas and plate of sliced lemon, and stood dutifully as Bea pinched his cheeks again and fussed over him.

It was good, as far as iced teas go, but I found myself missing the long island portion.

I took in the surroundings as we sipped our iced tea.

Lost Souls bussed food back and forth between the tables as Imp waiters patrolled back and forth, in step to the brass and the thumping drums.

Shub Niggurath bounced up and down excitedly, munching down her lemon slices, rind and all, until only mine was left.

She eyed it hungrily but said nothing.

I smiled and fished it out.

“Here you go, Bea,” I said.

She smiled.

==YOU SURE?==

“Go ahead.”

It was gone before I took my hand back.

==THANKS HUN. YOU ARE SO SWEET.==

She took my hands in hers.

==BOY THESE ARE GOOD SEATS. I’M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SHOW. I HAVEN’T SEEN DEBBIE IN YEARS. I HOPE SHE’S DOING WELL.==

I nodded and smiled. Seeing Debbie would be…bittersweet.

I knew Debbie felt bad about what had happened between us, or rather what almost happened. We had grown close, and I had just been ready to ask her out when she told me she had a new boyfriend. I

started drinking a bit more, then.

But I looked at my eldritch goat girl. I wouldn’t trade her for anything.

Chapter 6 – Debbie

ur food came. It was comfortable and delicious – two plates of spaghetti with meat sauce. Bea ate it, and sure enough it was a total mess with her slurping strands and watching them wriggle their

way up to her mouth.

I tried to explain about twirling the spaghetti but the way she stared at me, I’d have had more luck with an actual goat.

The table near us ordered cherries jubilee, and I watched an Arch-Vile in a chef hat summon fire down upon it. It flashed blue in a great conflagration.

As he left to applause, my eye wandered to a trio of demons going around the tables a floor below: a solidly built commando girl with a massive pepper mill, an Imp girl lighting candles with her

fingers, and a pinky Demon who was pouring waters.

The commando girl brought out her pepper mill for a wealthy-looking young couple, and after they assented, zealously began spraying their food, cranking her pepper mill with a loud grinding sound.

Black and brown flakes fell like ashen snow on their pasta.

As she cranked, a young man in a blue suit walked past the three Demons. Even I had to admit he was good looking, and I’m a terrible gauge of male beauty.

He brushed against the Commando girl’s side. Her eyes widened, and I could practically see the hearts form above her head. She absently turned to watch him as she cranked, spraying a cloud of

black mist near the spiky Imp girl.

The Imp girl stared forward, her mouth agape and eyes half-closed, as she wrestled with a powerful sneeze.

“AH-AH-AH…” She struggled in a high voice…

She turned away from the table but right into the face of the Pinky Demon girl, who was busying herself pouring a glass with a frown.

“AH-CHOO!”

Water spilled everywhere. The young woman at the table cried out in shock as water sprayed her dress. The Pinky Demon girl wiped the flaming snot off her nose, and her face twisted in rage. The

Imp looked conciliatory, but it was too late.

The Demon leapt forward.

The table shattered as the Pinky Demon tackled the Imp. Plates and silverware launched into the air as the couple ran for cover, and an errant brown hand smacked into the Commando girl and sent

her toppling into a Lost Soul. The poor flaming skull glided like an air hockey puck into another one, sending trays flying everywhere.

The chaos spread, and soon even the upper floor was a total melee. Gaspard had a bald zombie in a headlock and was punching him in the head.

Bea watched the display of carnage and mayhem with laughter and applause, as if she was watching toddlers play.

==I COULD JUST EAT THEM UP!==

“Enough!” A feminine voice bellowed, before a rocket collided and exploded against the wall.

Debbie stepped out from the upstairs kitchen, all eight feet of Steam-goat girl fury. She was a buxom cyberdemon girl, and I felt a tinge of the old spark, still.

The fighting stopped.

“You idiots! This is a restaurant! You are disturbing the guests. They will leave us bad yelp reviews and we’ll all be back to doing gaming conventions. Now fix all this.”

The Demons worked quickly, setting up tables and Replacing plates and silverware. An Arch-Vile stood over the table shattered by the three Demon servers, and his hands turned red for a moment. It

re-formed before him.

As Debbie nodded at the quick return to normalcy, she turned, and her eyes locked with mine. She froze. She smiled slowly, uncertainly.

She took three quick strides to our table.

“H-hello, anon…” The attractive cyberdemon said.

“Hi Debbie…” I responded.

“You look good,” she said.

“You too…”

==HI DEBBIE!==

“Hello…Aunt Quake,” Debbie said flatly.

Bea frowned.

==WHAT’S WRONG?==

“Wrong? Why should anything be wrong? I’m at work, at my club that I own. Alone.”

Bea looked behind Debbie – as if a person should be there.

==WHERE’S DOOM GUY?==

“Well, funny you should ask; we broke up,” there was less sadness in her voice than anger. I suddenly felt very nervous. There was aggression here, and I had no idea why.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Debbie…” I started.

“Hey, these things happen,” Debbie said, an edge in her voice. “I mean, things were going so good until we got the news…”

“Wha-What news?” I asked.

Debbie glared at Bea as my goat girl sipped her glass. “That Daisy was alive, of course.”

Shub-Niggurath’s eyes widened, and she spit out her water.

==HE FOUND OUT!?==

“You can imagine his surprise! And mine too, of course, since I seem to recall someone telling me that she had been eaten.”

The glare Debbie gave to Shub-Niggurath was deadlier than her rocket launcher.

“Who is Daisy?” I asked.

“Doom Guy’s girlfriend, a rabbit girl. Cutest thing on earth. Sweeter than honey. Makes you sick, honestly,” Debbie said, putting a finger down her throat. “Little miss perfect…Doom Guy loves

her. They’re getting married now. I got the heave-ho the second he found out she was alive…”

==I’M SO SORRY, DEBBIE…==

“You can put your sorries in a sack,” Debbie said. “You were supposed to eat her!”

==I COULDN’T DO IT. SHE REMINDED ME OF TABITHA…==

“Tabitha?” Deborah roared. “Tabitha’s a snake made of fire. What does she have in common with a bunnygirl?”

==SHE LIKES JPOP TOO.==

“Jpop?! Jpop?! I…I…lost my true love because of…JPop???” Debbie’s eyes filled with tears.

==DEBBIE, PLEASE, I SWEAR, IF I’D KNOWN HE’D HAVE FOUND HER, I WOULD HAVE NOT COME HERE TONIGHT FOR THIS AWKWARD CONVERSATION.==

“Well gee, thanks,” Debbie said.

==BUT HOW DID HE KNOW? I PUT HER IN THE VOLCANO PRISON.==

“Yeah, great idea, that. Xemu’s the biggest gossip in the galaxy. He posted pictures of them eating Alfredo on Facebook. Xemu’s friends with the Strogg, the Strogg told Ranger, and Ranger told

Doom Guy.”

==YOU KNOW, COME TO THINK OF IT, I SAW THAT POST.==

“He charged off and rescued her,” Debbie continued, picking up our bottle of Crystal and drinking it in two gulps. She chewed on the glass absently, like ice cubes. “Vaporized the prison and

blasted back here in a DC-8 with rocket engines instead of jet turbines.”

==I CAN ONLY SAY I’M SORRY, DEBBIE. THIS IS WHY PENCILS HAVE ERASERS. HOW CAN I MAKE AMENDS?==

“Erasers are an apropriate thing to bring up. As I recall, I gave up something very, very dear to me in order to get Doom Guy. And your end was for me to back off on that important thing. If my

relationship is over…”

==WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?==

Debbie looked at me with a razor sharp grin. “Why nothing. I’m going to go perform. See you later…Auntie Quake. And you as well, Anon.”

The cyberdemon steamed off with great strides, making the glasses in the table clink against the plates.

Bea was shaking, breathing heavily, fussing and fanning herself with both hands.

“Calm down, sweetie,” I said.

==SHE’S GONNA TRY TO GIVE ME THE BAD END.==

“She can’t possibly kill you,” I said.

==NO, SHE CAN’T. THAT’S NOT THE BAD END.==

She grasped my hand tightly. There was genuine fear in her eyes.

“Me? You think she wants to kill me?”

==NOT THAT EITHER.==

She leaned in even closer, clutching my hand even tighter. Her eyes wide with fear.

==SHE’LL TAKE YOU AWAY. MAKE YOU HATE ME. THAT’S THE BAD END.==

I laughed.

“She can’t make me hate you, Bea…”

==YOU LOVE HER MORE THAN ME. SHE HAD YOU FIRST, UNTIL I BOUGHT HER OFF WITH DOOM GUY.==

“That-what?”

==I TOLD HER TO BACK OFF ON YOU. SHE SAID SHE’D DO IT IF I GOT HER HER CRUSH. I WAS SUPPOSED TO EAT DAISY TO GET HER OUT OF THE PICTURE.==

“That…that’s awful.”

==WELL, I AM A COSMIC HORROR AND SHE’S A DEMON. WHAT IS ONE BUNNY GIRL NEXT TO MY UNFATHOMABLE WILL? BUT I COULDN’T DO IT. DAISY WAS SO NICE AND SCARED, AND I CAN’T STAND BETWEEN TRUE LOVE. SO

I CRAWFISHED. I DUMPED HER OFF IN A CELL WITH XEMU. I WAS HOPING DOOMGUY WOULD FIND OUT AFTER WE GOT MARRIED, BUT XEMU HAD TO BE A FUCKING FAGGOT AND HE BLABBED.==

“You were gonna double-cross Debbie all along?”

==WELL SHE’S A LESSER BEING. IT’S MY RIGHT. IT’S ALL SO SORDID WHEN ‘D’ GETS INVOLVED, HUN. YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE WHAT WE DO. WHAT I’VE DONE.==

“Oh I believe it,” I said. I sighed and shook my head.

I squeezed her hand.

“I know you can be a total creepy eldritch nightmare, but you are my creepy eldritch nightmare. I love you more than I ever loved her.”

Shub-Niggurath smiled, a sweet smile.

Chapter 7 – The Kiss

“Maybe we should get going,” I said. “Prevent any awkwardness.”

==IT’S NOT GOING TO MATTER. SHE HAS SOMETHING PLANNED.==

“Well, then why not trip her or give her a cankersore?”

==NO. I CAN’T JUST JAM THIS THROUGH. IF I WANTED THAT I’D HAVE BROKEN YOUR BRAIN AND REBUILT YOU AS A DROOLING SEMEN PUMP. YOU HAVE TO REFUSE HER…BUT YOU WON’T. SHE’LL USE HER CYBERDEMON

CHARMS.==

“Stop saying that!” I said, my voice raised. “I already told you that I love you!”

==DON’T SHOUT AT ME.==

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Let’s just get out of here. Let me flag down Gaspard and settle up the bill.”

I moved to signal him, but the house lights darkened, and the slip gate burst on in a fiery disorder. And through it, I saw Debbie standing with a microphone.

“Hey everyone! Welcome to the Tower of Babel. Where everything is made up and the points don’t matter. That’s right; the points are like anything id software has done after 2001.”

The crowd winced.

“What, are they in the audience? We got a great show for you today. Morthus the Mancubus is going to stop by, and Barefoot Baroness. Also, Alton Brown will stop by. But first I’d like to take a
moment to talk about a very special person. A boy…”

Uh oh, I thought.

“He’s a really great guy and well-let’s get him down here! Anon, come down here!”

The whole place started applauding.

I looked at Bea.

==JUST DO IT. GET IT OVER WITH.==

Sighing, I stood.

“I guess I have to. You won’t relax until I shoot her down,” I said.

I went through the slipgate, into the sands of Deimos itself. The wind hit me, bereft of refreshment due to its heat. Slipgates stared down at us, windows into the club back on earth through which

the patrons watched.

“Isn’t he gorgeous girls?”

Cheers and hooting erupted through the slipgates.

“Yes, but-” I started.

“We almost dated, but I don’t need to tell all of you how things can go. He was so heartbroken that we never went out. He’ll deny it now, of course, but he called me once, a month back. Do you

remember?”

“I don’t have your number,” I said.

“You called and left a message on the machine at Tower of Babel. It was popular with the girls…and me, I’ll admit.”

My mind raced. There had been a few nights where I had blacked our from drinking, especially after that damned Holder of the End got me to ask her what happens when they all come together. There

was no telling what I did…

“Do you guys want to hear it?” Debbie asked:

The crowd, retarded trained seals that they were, clapped and applauded.

“No!” I shouted.

“Don’t worry; if it embarrasses you, it’s a good embarrassment…”

“But I’m in love with-”

My voice reverberated over the loudspeaker, cutting me off.

“Debbie…I don’t…I don’t have your numberrbut….I missed my chance. I…I love you, Debbie. I wish I had gotten to you sooner. The times…the calls. They were the most intense, most erotic

experience of my life. I let you go. I miss you…”

“I was drunk!” I shouted up toward the slipgates. But I had no microphone and the crowd didn’t hear me over their sentimental ‘awwwwww.’

I could see Bea through the slipgate. Her lip was quivering. She heard all of it.

“No…” I pleaded.

“Should I let him ask me out?” Debbie said, staring at Bea.

The crowd cheered. I moved to escape, but Debbie grabbed me gently but firmly. There was no way in Hell I could get out of her grasp.

Debbie leaned down. Tantalizing and beautiful, as the crowd cheered for a kiss. She gently jiggled her breasts at my face.

“You could ask me out now.”

“But I am…” I started into the microphone.

“Good,” she said, yanking away the mic. “I accept.”

“N-”

As I opened my mouth to speak, she lunged in. Her full lips touched mine, and her tongue invaded my open mouth.

The crowd cheered.

My heart skipped, and for a second – a split second – I did the worst thing of all. I savored it. And then I realized what had happened, and I thought of Bea. I recoiled with a gasp, a sickness

in my chest.

Debbi grinned down at me wickedly, triumphantly. I shook my head but her grip tightened. I couldn’t escape.

A chair slid backward. Impossibly it overpowered all other noises, and all eyes knew where it came from. The club went dead silent.

And a shadow loomed until there was no light on Deimos, for a vast shape had stood in front of the sun.

Debbie released me and leapt away, and for a moment I think she realized what exactly she was trifling with, and how she could very spend eternity in many pieces.

But instead, the shadow moved off, and faintly through the slipgate I saw a tiny goat girl, her hand over her mouth, racing for the stairs.

“Bea!” I called out. “Wait!”

Debbie reached out to grab me, but her fear had made her leap out of reach. I made my way to the slipgate.

I looked back at her. She saw the sadness in my eyes, and her face twisted with horror.

“Anon, I-” she started.

“You really do belong in hell, Debbie,” I said, stepping through the slipgate.

I never looked back again.

I raced through the club, through the nauseous swirling orange lights, my feet clanking on the iron floors. The Tower of Babel was a twisted metal structure, built to seduce, to lull, but it was

full of jagged and nasty angles, and harsh lighting. It was a maze designed to keep you in, away from your goat girl whose heart (or one of them, anyway) you had broken.

As I bolted out the front door. I saw the commando girl from earlier. She had the blue suited young man pinned against a wall, and was intensely sucking on his face, her thin but toned muscles

wrapped around his shoulders. He held her in his arms, her legs wrapped around him.

“Did you see a goat girl run past?” O shouted.

The commando broke off. “Fuck no, I’ve been-”

“Yes, I saw her,” the man said, panting. She went off that way…”

“Great, thanks,” I said, as they resumed their intense make out session.

I ran down the road. I saw a broken black heel stuck in a grate, and discarded shoes split for cloven hooves. Those were Bea’s, they had to be. I sprinted into the fog, past the mist and steam

rising up from the sewer grates with a hiss.

I was encouraged by the fact that she didn’t teleport away, or that we weren’t going uphill where her goat legs would grasp the terrain more effectively than my own.

I heard a smash and rattle in a side alley, and I turned back. There was a figure there, walking away on bear cloven feet, her hourglass figure swaying as she ran.

“Bea!” I called out.

The figure stopped. Her head bobbed. It was her.

“Bea…”

I heard her sobbing as I approached. I raced to her and spun her around.

Her cosmic eyes were stormy, tears were running down her face as her lip pouted.

==I FELT IT. THAT SPLIT SECOND WHERE YOU-==

“If you felt that,” I said, drawing closer, “…then feel this…”

I grasped her in my arms, and planted my lips against hers, tilting her backward and forcing her into my grasp.

She collapsed with a swoon, uttering a small muffled cry of surprise in her throat.

Our mouths opened, and my tongue found a timid companion. Then another tongue. And another. And another, soon all working and falling all over each other to taste me. My heart pounded. I could

feel her deep exhales as we kissed, her embrace as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

“There,” I said, when I was finally able to break away. “I love you, Shub Niggurath. Not some dumb skyscraper with goat legs. You. I would rather have one nightmare with you than a million good

dreams with anybody else.”

==OHHH A-ANON…==

She blinked at me, tears of joy in her eyes.

She latched back onto me, forcing her tongues into my mouth and encircling mine, covering it in her saliva.

She pointed up her cleavage toward my face.

==WORSHIP MY TITS.==

I pushed her over to the brick wall of the alley, and slid her up it. She wrapped her legs around my waist, kissing me from above.

I buried my head into her perfect breasts, so soft yet firm. She pulled them out of her dress and out of her bra with the sound of torn fabric, and I gazed at her perfect, pointed nipples. I

swirled my tongue around them, and she tilted her head back and moaned.

I moved my face into her cleavage, reveling in the feel against my cheeks. She clutched my head and pushed in firmly, tilting me to lick one or the other.

After a few minutes of suckling at her while she groaned, she pulled my head away.

==LET’S FUCK.==

I felt a slight warmth, then cold air. I looked at my arm and saw the fabric of my suit and shirt burning away with gentle orange embers, leaving my bare flesh which rippled with goosebumps in the

chill.

“My clothes…” I said

==FUCK YOUR CLOTHES. YOU DON’T NEED THEM. I WANT YOU NAKED.==

As my underwear burned away, Shub-Niggurath squatted before my unsheathed penis near the piles of trash, and took me into her mouth.

The warmth and softness – and the countless tongues – worked me over as she suckled with slurps and gulps. The pleasure was so intense my knees buckled.

She stared up at me with her dark eyes, and within were what seemed like thousands of sparkling stars.

I cried out in ecstasy. Those eyes. I tilted my head back…

She took me out of her mouth. I snapped my head back down.

==DON’T LOOK AWAY. STARE IN MY EYES.==

She slurped and sucked, and I began to pump into her mouth. She had me. The pleasure, the joy…

“B…Bea…I’m gonna cum…I’m cumming…Oh…”

I closed my eyes.

It ended.

She was gone. I whimpered and looked around, and for a moment I thought this was some cruel trick, until I saw her bent over the dumpster, her skirt hiked up, her perfect ass swaying as her little

goat tail wagged.

==IT’S TIME. ENTER ME.==

I slipped the tip of my cock into her waiting most pussy. She cooed and tightened as I entered, her head lowering.

I plunged in with a grunt. She cried out.

I pumped and slid, and as I did she moaned. The universe shook beneath us, above us. The stars fell out of the sky and returned to their spot in the firmament.

As I felt the moment near, I reveled in her tail against me, and her wiggling hips, and those…ears.

I went for it.

I grabbed her long, soft goat ears in my hands.

==WHAT ARE YOU-==

I tugged on them as I pumped, using them as handles I pulled her head upward. She yelped but gushed wetness all over me, and as I thrusted I felt the walls of her vagina quiver and shake against

my cock like a cave in a collapsing mountain.

==AGHHHHHH ANONNNNN!==

Her voice sent me over the edge, and I erupted inside her.

“Ia! Iaaaaaaaa Shub Niggurath! Iaaaaaaaa!” I shouted.

My balls emptied into her.

And then William Shakespeare walked past, totally naked, a towel draped over his shoulder as if he were headed for a locker-room shower.

He stopped and examined us a moment, pursed his lips, nodded, and gave me a thumbs up.

“Huh. The Bard likes my form,” I said.

And then, my will exhausted, I collapsed.

When I came to, I was in my bed, a goat girl nuzzled up against me, her eyes open and staring into mine as I opened them. She smiled wide.

==MORNING SLEEPY. OR SHOULD I SAY, STALLION.==

I laughed. “That was amazing.”

==YEP. THE NEXT FOUR TIMES WERE GREAT TOO.==

“You fucked me while I was out?”

==ABSOLUTELY. I HAVE TAKEN THE SUM TOTAL OF TWO BILLION SPERM FROM YOU. I AM NOW WITH CHILD. A BOY. WE SHALL NAME HIM BASTARD, FOR HE WAS CONCEIVED IN CONGRESS OUTSIDE OF WEDLOCK.==

“I-I don’t think he’ll like that.”

==HE WON’T AT ALL. HE SHALL LOATHE HIS NAME.==

“Well, what about Jeremy? I like Jeremy.”

==JEREMY? YOU WANT A COSMIC ENTITY TO BE NAMED JEREMY?==

“Fair enough; we’ll discuss later. So when do you want to marry? Soon?”

==AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I NEED TO BRING YOU TO SEE THE FAMILY FIRST. IT MIGHT BE A LITTLE ROUGH, TO WARN YOU.==

“I know; your kids will he reluctant.”

==MY BABIES? NO, THEY’LL LOVE YOU. MEETING DADDY IS WHAT COULD BE…TRICKY.==

My blood went cold. “D-daddy? Azathoth? Why do I need to meet him? I thought he was asleep…”

==WELL, MOSTLY. LOOK, DADDY’S REALLY SWEET. HE JUST HAS A THING ABOUT THE BOYS I DATED OR MARRIED.==

“A thing?”

==HE’S INCINERATED THEM TO A MAN. BUT THEY WERE ALL JERKS WHO MADE ME CRY. YOU ARE DIFFERENT. I’M SURE OF IT. HE’LL LIKE YOU.==

“I’m gonna get the Bad End, aren’t I?”

==NOW SWEETIE THERE’S NO GUARANTEE YOU WILL. BUT ENOUGH OF THAT. NOW THAT YOU ARE AWAKE…==

She reached down between my legs and grasped my cock.

I smiled. “Yes, Shub-Niggurath,” I said.

Chapter 8 – The Warp

==YOU OK, HUN?==

Bea sat in the seat next to me on the ship, her head on my shoulder, adoringly staring into my eyes.

It had been six weeks since I had started dating the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, and as terrifying and insanity-inducing as it was, I had never been happier. She was such a

sweetheart.

I rubbed the sweat on my palms onto my pants and nodded. I didn’t like showing fear in front of Shub-Niggurath, even if it happened often enough.

“Yeah…” I said. “I’ve just never um, never traveled through the Warp before.”

Bea bounced up and down with a big grin. Her goat ears flopped, as did her full breasts. The jiggle still excited me even after all these weeks.

==I KNOW. IT’S SO EXCITING! YOUR FIRST BIG TRIP.==

“Couldn’t we just teleport there?” I asked, swallowing as I watched the stars through the window.

==AND MISS OUT ON THE EXPERIENCE? IF WE’RE LUCKY WE MIGHT GET TO SEE KHORNE ERUPTING.==

“What happens to the ship if Khorne erupts?”

==WE HAVE A WONDERFUL UNPLANNED VACATION. THE DAEMONS KNOW HOW TO PARTY. WHY, ARE YOU NERVOUS?==

“I just don’t want to be corrupted into some pustule-laden corpse-man or rageaholic or…well, whatever Tzeentch and Slaanesh do. But you’d stop that, right?”

Bea clapped her hands excitedly and smiled, her ears waggling.

==YOU WOULD BE SOOO ADORABLE CORRUPTED BY CHAOS.==

“That’s not funny,” I admonished.

==WHAT, NOT EVEN ONE TENTACLE? THEY CAN BE VERY EROGENOUS, YOU KNOW.==

“I really don’t feel comfortable…”

==HUN, JUST CALM DOWN. IF CONGRESS WITH THE HELL MOTHER DIDN’T CORRUPT YOU, NOTHING IN THERE WILL. AND THE WARP IS LIKE A TEA PARTY COMPARED TO DADDY’S HOUSE.==

“Daddy…” I repeated, grimly. The Daemon Sultan at the center of the universe, sleeping in nightmare, creating all of existence in his bad dream. I had to go and ‘speak’ to it somehow, about my

intentions with its daughter.

==DON’T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT. DADDY’S GONNA LOVE YOU.==

“And if he doesn’t?”

==THEN I’LL POUT AND HE’LL ACCEPT IT. OR HE’LL TORCH YOU AND BUY ME A PONY.==

“So it’s win-win for you, that’s good,” I said with a small laugh and a shudder to my core.

==DADDY HARDLY EVER BURNS ANYONE I LIKE. RELAX.==

I exhaled.

==LET’S TAKE YOUR MIND OFF OF IT. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE IMPERIUM OF MANKIND?==

“They seem…intense,” I said, watching several somber Imperial Guardsmen enter the flight deck. In spite of their attempt at stoicism, they were all scarcely older than eighteen, wide-eyed as

they beheld the Imperial Cruiser.

I frowned. “Why are Imperial Guard troops going to see Azathoth?”

Bea leaned over to me, her dark eyes sparkling.

==THEY DON’T KNOW THAT’S WHERE WE’RE GOING. THEY THINK THEY ARE HEADING TO A COLONY IN THE MILKY WAY. I’M GOING TO SURPRISE THEM WHEN WE GET IN THE WARP. AND TAKE OVER CONTROL OF THE SHIP.==

“I’m guessing they won’t appreciate that,” I said.

Shub Niggurah shrugged.

==SO WHAT? MY COSMIC MORALITY TRANSCENDS THEIR PUNY ‘FEELINGS’ AND ‘CONCERNS’ AND ‘SANTIY.’ WE SHOULD BE LEAVING SOON.==

As the ship entered into the Warp, Shub-Niggurath put a hand on her brow.

“You okay?” I asked.

==YEP. I JUST NEED TO GET INTO THE NAVIGATOR’S BRAIN…JUST GOTTA FIND THE RIGHT ONE…C’MON, WHERE’S THAT SNAP…THERE WE GO! I’M IN. NOW, LET’S CHANGE COURSE…==

There was no appreciable effect in the craft, but Bea seemed quite happy with herself.

We drifted along, riding the currents of psychic thought. Bea sat next to me, her face scrunched up.

“How is it going?”

==WE’RE MAKING GOOD TIME. WE GOT A STRONG CURRENT.==

A few hours – or was it minutes? – passed. Bea looked about impatiently. The craft was quiet; most of the Imperial Guard were asleep. In truth, my own eyes were feeling heavy.

Finally it grew too much for my eldritch goat.

==WE NEED TO SPICE THINGS UP A BIT.==

There was a sound of something powering down. The guardsmen stirred, looking around uncertainly at the sudden quiet.

“What did you do?”

==I SHUT OFF THE CONTAINMENT FIELD. WE’LL MEET SOME NEW FRIENDS.==

There were purple flashes of light. The Imperial Guard troops were pulled from their seats as daemonettes with shapely forms and lobster claws quickly overpowered them and began tearing off their

clothes.

“Uh oh…” I said over the male screams and laugh girlish voices.

==THIS IS JUST HOW YOU SAY HELLO IN THE WARP.==

Several daemonettes approached us, eyeing me hungrily. I shifted in my seat.

“He’s cute…” One of the daemonettes said. “Alright goat girl, hand him over…”

Bea wrapped her arms around me.

==MINE.==

The daemonettes -even those with the soldiers – turned their heads to the sound of the voice. Their eyes widened. The daemonettes dropped to their knees.

“Ia, Hell Mother!” the first damonette said, staring at the floor. “Forgive us. Are all these yours?”

The men looked up from near their respective tormentors, eyes wide, pleading with desperation.

==JUST THIS ONE. THE OTHERS ARE FREE: BUT TAKE THEM ONLY IF YOU PLAN TO MAKE THEM HUSBANDOS, NO FUCK AND CHUCK.==

“Okay. What about your mate? Could we play with him? Maybe start him off for you?”

==NO.==

“Well…can we watch you play with him?” One of the shorter daemonettes asked.

“We would be honored to see The Hell Mother copulate,” another said. “To learn.”

“And we can see his cock, too!” The short one added, clacking her lobster claw as another elbowed her.

Bea looked at me for a second. I shook my head slightly.

==THAT SEEMS FAIR.==

“Wa-” I started, before the kiss.

Our lips met, and our tongues intertwined, and my heart began racing. The Slaaneshi began to coo and moan, and being watched -knowing they were watching us- made me get hard.

Bea looked in my eyes and blinked her eyelashes at me with a coquettish smile. How could I resist?

I smiled and put my hand behind her head, burying my fingers in her soft hair. Our lips interlocked.

Our clothes were soon off in tatters, and Bea was straddling me, grinding her sweet moist hole against the base of my cock as I thrusted upward into her.

Her breasts heaved. She moaned and cooed, her vagina muscles tightening against me.

The daemonettes began swaying and undulating as they watched us, grabbing the now naked Imperial guardsmen and riding them like mechanical bulls. The soldiers’ screams of terror gave way to moans

of ecstasy.

Soon they all faded away, and there was only me and Bea, and our hands, our lips, our sex. I felt the climax fulminating within me.

Bea came first, yipping and crying out with a loud roar, and her quivering vagina put me to climax. I erupted inside her. Bea’s eyes went wide, and I saw the universe inside them.

The sex went on for hours. Something about the Warp replenished you. Finally everyone was exhausted, and daemonettes lay cuddled with their new beaus, all sleeping with big smiles on their faces.

Shub Niggurath lay nestled against me, our bodies slick with sweat and sex, my empty balls the only aching part of me. Her cute little face was so serene.

I kissed her all over her face.

I petted Bea’s soft ears as she slept up against me.

There was another flash, red this time, and a deep resonating thud on the ship. A vast shape with dark wings appeared before us, and turned colorless eyes toward me and Bea.

The hulking Daemon approached. A Bloodthirster.

I nudged Bea, but she remained peacefully asleep.

“Hun…” I said quietly but urgently.

The beast took one cavernous step towards us. Everything shook.

“Hun?!” I said, my voice breaking.

The bloodthirster stood above us. He had to be three of me tall, his hands could crush my skull like a grape.

“H-hi…” I said, as the hulking beast obscured all light above me.

“Hi, I’m Frank,” the big daemon said, folding his wings.

“Hello…Frank. You just got here?”

“Yep. Got created by the immense psychic energy of Shub Niggurath’s orgasm.”

“Oh. Why a Bloodthirster? I’d figure a daemonette.”

Frank shrugged. “Fuck if I know. If I had to guess, Mom suppresses a powerful homicidal urge to eat her mate following an orgasm. I think…you’re my Dad?”

“I uh…yeah. Hi, son.”

The bloodthirster smiled, or got as close to doing it as he could.

“So Dad, can I have fifty bucks?”

“Fifty bucks?! What for?”

“Some of the guys are gonna go buy chainaxes and stuff.”

“You already met people?”

“Yeah, well, the Warp and time currents…”

“And you went and saw your friends first before seeing your Mom and me?” I said, a little upset.

His rolled his pure white eyes. “C’mon Dad, you and Mom were…you know…” He pointed at our naked bodies. “This is bad enough.”

I sighed and covered up Shub Niggurath’s breasts with my arm. “Alright. Where are my pants?”

“Which fragment?” Frank said testily.

“Hey, your Mom and Dad have sex, alright?” I shot back. “If you want my money…”

“Alright, alright. Where are they?”

I saw a fragment of khaki with a bit of leather sticking out.

“It’s over there,” I said, pointing. “Just take what I got. Leave me a twenty.”

My massive son dug down, fishing out my wallet and removing two bills.

“Thanks Dad,” he said, turning to leave. A breeze followed in his wake.

“Wait, wait…you gotta say hello to your mother,” I said.

He sighed. “I’ll catch up with you guys later. Mom’s sleeping. Best not to wake her.”

I drifted back into sleep, dreaming of screaming monsters and tentacles. It was all fairly tame.

Bea stirred, and I woke with her, shaking off sleep as I scanned the cruiser. The ‘newlyweds’ were all up, and for the most part dressed. The daemonettes had made their new husbands breakfast:

pastries shaped with an erotic theme. Everyone was sitting down to a quiet meal, although the soldiers didn’t appear too crazy about the penis-shaped danish.

Bea stirred again, letting out a little coo.

“Morning, mommy…” I whispered, kissing her velvet ear. It twitched.

Bea giggled, smiling with her eyes still shut. She grasped my hand and put it to her womb lovingly.

==I LOVE BEING CALLED THAT. YOU WILL SO LOVE BEING A DADDY AND MEETING OUR SON. AND HE’S GOING TO BE SUCH A GOOD BOY.==

“Actually, I already met our son.”

Bea frowned.

==BUT LITTLE BASTARD HASN’T FULLY FORMED HIS TELEPATHIC ORGANS. HOW COULD HE BE GIVING YOU NIGHTMARES YET? DID HE TIME TRAVEL?==

“It wasn’t him. We have another son, Frank. He’s a bloodthirster. He was born from your um…climax.”

Bea’s eyes shot open, glistening with sparkles in the black of her pupils. She glared about with a wide grin and leapt up. She grabbed in the air and a robe was there for her, and she wrapped

herself in it.

==WE MADE A BABY IN THE WARP?! AN ITTY BITTY BLOODTHIRSTER?WHERE IS HE???==

She looked about excitedly.

==FRANK?? FRANKIE?!==

I cleared my throat.

“He’s gone.”

Bea blinked for a moment, uncomprehending.

==GONE?==

“He um…he asked for fifty bucks and left.”

Bea’s smile faded. She looked as if she had been slapped.

==H-HE DIDN’T SAY HELLO??==

“You were sleeping. He didn’t want-”

Her eyes welled with tears.

==HE DIDN’T GIVE HIS MOMMY A KISS?!==

“Oh Hun…”

She burst into tears.

I stood, and wrapped my arms around her. She shuddered.

“He’s-you know …” I started. “…a Bloodthirster. He wanted to go out with his friends.”

The only response I got was a loud sob.

==HE’S JUST A BABY OUT THERE. THIS IS NO PLACE FOR A BLOODTHIRSTER.==

“The Warp isn’t?”

==EXACTLY. LOOK AT THIS DEN OF RAPE AND MURDER. WHAT IF THE OTHER BLOODTHIRSTERS ARE MEAN TO HIM?==

“I think he’ll be okay. He’s a big guy.”

==FOR YOU.==

“I could try to look for him…” I said, unclear how I would do that.

==NO, NO…I’LL HAVE GINO TRACK HIM.==

“Gino?”

==HE’S MY OLDEST BLOODTHIRSTER. HE’LL FIND HIM==

Bea sniffed sadly.

“I’m sorry hun. I didn’t know you’d be so sad. I thought it was normal. I was a bit cross he left.”

==WELL OF COURSE. HE’S OUR SON.==

Bea pouted out her lower lip and blinked away more tears.

==I WANT MY BABY. I HAVEN’T EVEN HELD HIM.==

“He’s probably nine meters tall.”

==I’M AWARE.==

Bea dug through her robe. Somehow a phone was there. She dialed a few

==GINO? GINO? IT’S MAMA. I NEED YOU TO FIND YOUR BROTHER. NO, NOT ENZO. FRANKIE. YEAH, THE NEW ONE…GO GET HIM AND BRING HIM TO ME. WHERE AM I? I’M ON AN IMPERIAL CRUISER. LOOK FOR THE

ONE THAT THE WARP IS TRYING TO FLEE. JUST GET HERE OKAY? LOVE YOU.==

she flipped her phone shut with a sigh.

It was not long before there was a red flash of light, and two hulking Bloodthirsters filled the ship. Frank I recognized, but there was another, bigger and more frightening, holding Frank by the

arm, a snarl on his face.

“What is all this about?!” Frank yelled, shaking himself free from Gino’s grasp.

“You made Mama cry, you idiot!” Gino shouted, smacking Frank across the head. “Don’t you have any fucking manners?”

Frank growled and bared his teeth. The two of them began shoving each other. Gino was bigger, and his shoves pushed Frank much farther, but Frank wouldn’t give up. I felt a bit of pride for my

scrappy son, though I realized he wasn’t exactly of my stock.

==ENOUGH, YOU TWO. GINO, HE’S ONLY A BABY. HE DOESN’T KNOW.==

The shoving stopped. Gino retreated to one side with his head bowed. Shub Niggurath stood before them both, a little black shape in a vast sky of red, so tiny and yet so powerful. She reached up

and touched Frank’s cheek, and pinched it.

==YOU ARE SO PRECIOUS.==

“T-Thanks, Mom,” Frank said. “I’m sorry.”

==IT’S OKAY. YOU ARE HERE NOW.==

She leaned up and kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

==YOU GOT MITTENS?==

He nodded.

==GOOD. GINO, KEEP AN EYE ON HIM UNTIL HE GETS HIS FEET ON THE GROUND.==

Gino sighed and rolled his eyes. “Come on Mom…We’re Khornate. We can’t go helping each other.”

==I DON’T CARE IF YOU ARE KHORNATE. YOU ARE STILL MY CHILDREN, OF THE LINE OF AZATHOTH HIMSELF. YOU LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER.==

Gino grunted. “Alright, alright. I’ll do what we can. We should probably go soon.”

Bea gave them both a giant hug at the same time, with enough strength to force them to their knees.

==I LOVE YOU BOTH. CALL ME,
OKAY?==

“Goodbye son,” I said.

Frank smiled and bowed. “See ya, Dad.”

The two flashed away. Bea smiled happily.

==THERE. NOW THEY ARE ALL SET. LET’S GO SEE DADDY.==

With our son well situated, the daemonettes and their new husbands departed into the Warp.

We exited back into real space. The trip had been one day, but thousands of lightyears, even beyond what the Warp could normally do. We had arrived at our destination: the center of the

universe.

And it had to be the center, for it was where Azathoth was.

Chapter 9 – The Daemon Sultan

Azathoth was enormous.

His galactic form pulsed as his two lute players undulated alongside him, filling the aether with odd, hollow sounding tones as they danced in a wriggling display as disgusting as it was hypnotic.

To the right of the Daemon sultan was a spec, which grew larger as we approached. It was a white mansion set in a green lawn that floated in space, with a white picket fence surrounding it.

“Okay,” Bea said in a calm voice. “I’m going to park along the road. Daddy has a thing about people parking in the driveway. You know how Dads are about parking.”

“Y-your voice…” I said. “Where’s the eldritch echo?”

“Everyone uses indoor voice around Daddy,” Shub Niggurath said.

We exited the ship. There was a warm breeze, which was especially odd because we were in the cold vacuum of space.

“Should I be dead?” I asked, inhaling to find no air, but still somehow breathing.

“Eh,” Bea said with a shrug. “Reality rarely pays attention around here. Daddy makes it throw up.”

Our feet crunched on the stone of the walkway. We passed a ceramic Garden Gnome, its eyes gouged out and red paint dried in the sockets. A plastic flamingo lay sideways behind some bushes, its

head violently caved in.

I shuddered.

A Virgin Mary statue sat in another corner of the lawn.

Shub Niggurath shrugged.

“Mom and Dad are Catholic. Best not to mention my Mormonism, okay?”

“O-okay,” I said absently.

She rang the doorbell. The chime was effervescent and cheery, but the moaning wind seemed aware of the joke, hinting at a laugh even in its mourning sound.

She stared at me and straightened my tie, then patted my shirt and smiled at me. I squeezed her hand.

“You’ll do fine,” she whispered. “And don’t worry; I’ll be with you.”

“I love you Bea…” I whispered.

“I love you too, Anon…”

We kissed. I heard the latch of the deadbolt.

“I’m so excited! Oh, one more thing…” Bea said quickly as the door handle turned. “Daddy doesn’t know he’s Azathoth. If he ever figures out he is Azathoth, the universe will end, so don’t say

anything.”

“What?! Wait…”

The door opened and an astral figure appeared, a being which looked like the form of a woman, but as if the starry night sky were within. As she moved, the stars within her changed.

“Mommy!” Shub Niggurath shouted as she saw her mother.

“My little flesh cloud!” The astral woman said, arms outstretched.

They embraced, and shadow met goat girl, and forms changed, and for a moment I felt I might weep blood.

Behind the two were several servants, all asymmetrical aliens or squid-beings, atanding amidst the dark red and gold furnishings of
house. Compared to the outside, it appeared cavernous within.

One squid butler stood near the door, arms at his sides, his oval eyes half-lidded.

I glanced back at my goat girl and her mother, and their innocent embrace in their ‘true’ forms, and I realized I was going to collapse.

“Anon,” Bea said, catching me as I went woozy and steadying me on my feet. “This is my mother, Darkness. Mommy…this is him!”

“Hi Anon!” Mother Darkness said, giving me a hug. Her hands were like vacuums of pitiless cold, and their touch was the theft of all light and joy. “I feel like I’ve known you for years. Bea’s

raved about you.”

“T-thank you ma’am,” I said, reeling from her nightmarish embrace and polite words.

“Ma’am? Oh God, son…” She put a hand on my shoulder, and I forgot what sunlight as I suppressed a whimper. “Call me my Ladyship.”

“O-okay. Thank you, my Ladyship.”

Darkness giggled, putting a dark hand to her mouth. “You are cute. Bea’s father used to get flustered too.”

“Azathoth got flustered?” I asked.

The room went still. For a moment I saw horror on everyone’s faces.

“Azathoth? Who or what is that?” Shub Niggurath said loudly.

“No such creature exists,” the old squid butler said, his eyes darting.

“Punkin…” Mother Darkness said with a forced grin towards Bea. “Is he retarded?”

“He’s just new to all this.”

Darkness turned back to me. “Well, we operate without a net here sweetie. Don’t. Fuck. Up. No name. Not that name ever. Okay? The universe will end.”

I nodded vigorously. “He was just like me, you say?”

“Yep!” She said, changing her attitude totally as the others pretended nothing had ever been said. “Although he worked in imports as opposed to…sales.”

“Do…do I say I work in sales?”

“He knows about your job. Be truthful as much as possible. Unless the truth would upset him. Then lie.”

I felt sweat forming on my brow.

“Good. I see you understand how serious this is. Imagine doing it for 65 billion years. It’s a hell of a rush, I’ll tell you!” Mother Darkness said.

“Where is Daddy?” Bea asked.

“Upstairs napping,” Mother Darkness said. “He’ll be down soon, I’m sure.”

A man emerged from the dining room. He was swarthy, skin like an arab’s but unnaturally pale with dark eyes.

“This is Nyarlathotep,” Shub Niggurath said.

The swarthy man put his arms behind his back, his eyes narrowed and his gaze piercing.

“A Human, Bea?” He said in perfect English.

“What? I like them. They’re cute.”

Nyarlathotep rolled his eyes.

“And I like deltibid Sand demons, but I wouldn’t force the family to watch one eat.”

“Oh don’t be such an asshole,” Bea said. “You’ve done your fair share of terrestrial booth calls.”

“Again, I never brought any Human girls home,” Nyarlathotep said gruffly. “He’s gonna fuck up and end the universe.”

“Shhh, here he comes,” Mother Darkness said.

I heard a creak on the stairs, and a thud, and another creak, and another thud. And I saw Azathoth.

Azathoth was a man of average height, barrel chested, his hair a fading gray and wispy. He descended the stairs in a gold and red dressing gown, a pipe in his teeth which forced a kind of grin.

His eyes were normal, but none would dare call them Human. There was sheer madness in them, of a kind scarier than the vast formless mass writhing angrily outside.

This was the portion of Azathoth that was most awake. The world ender. The nightmare which sleeps. What being could behold him, and not run in terror, I thought.

“Daddyyy!” Shub Niggurath exclaimed happily.

“There’s my little girl!” He said, outstretching his arms as he reached the bottom step.

She raced to him and leapt into his arms, and he hugged her with one arm easily, his other hand clasping his pipe securely.

“I’m so glad to see you punkin.”

“I’m glad to be home! And here he is, Daddy,” Bea said, running to take my arm, bouncing and giddy with her giant smile. “…my new fella!”

Azathoth looked down at where his daughter had been hugging him with forlonging, and then at her on my arm. The side of his mouth twitched. He approached me with a glint in his eye, and I

realized his smile had faded into a baring of teeth.

“Ah yes…” He said in an upbeat yet dismissive tone. “The call center boy. The sex worker pervertmonger.”

“Now Daddy, it was an honest job,” Bea chirped, hugging me.

“I left that job at your daughter’s suggestion,” I added.

“So you are unemployed?”

“A-at present, yes.”

“Leaving a job without another lined up…” he said. “Not a very smart move.”

Azathoth puffed his pipe. Bubbles floated out slowly from the end into the air.

“I uh, well…I have a few good leads,” I stammered, watching the graceful little spheres drift upward and pop soundlessly.

“I see. Leads.”

“There’s more to a relationship than a job,” Shub Niggurath said. “and Anon will come through. He’s no couch potato.”

“Oh he’s busy, I hear,” he turned back to me, and I nearly fell to my knees and begged for mercy beneath his unfathomable gaze. “I understand you took my daughter in an alley after kissing another

woman in public.”

I turned crimson.

“Ah, well…you…you see…”

“I figured you for a sweet talker, at least,” Azathoth said in his strangely upbeat tone. “To have gotten my daughter acting so giddy.”

“He’s a sweet guy, Daddy. You can make anybody sound bad if you just recite the facts in that ‘Daddy’ way you do.”

“Well then it’s up to this young man to make himself sound good,” he stared at me with a studying expression. “So, hop to.”

I glared about, uncertainly. The others, bastards that they were, stared off into space with thousand yard stares. All were in their own worlds except Bea, who stared at me adoringly, her tail

wagging as she doubtless perceived all of this going so well.

Azathoth glared at me, and I saw irritation there. “Well, hop to!”

I felt the sweat forming. I leapt a little in the air.

Azathoth laughed from his belly, harshly, and at my expense. Nyarlathotep laughed even louder, and I hated him.

“No, no, Public School,”. Azathoth said. “Make yourself sound good.”

“Oh! Yeah, um…I love your daughter very much. She’s great. A little scary, very intense, but sweeter than candy,” I said loudly.

Shub-Niggurath hugged my arm. “Isn’t he great?”

“Well, you made my daughter sound good,” Azathoth said with a warm smile. “Clearly you like her, and that shows good taste. And it would explain why you bent her over a dumpster in an alleyway.”

“I didn’t really force her or anything,” I said. “We just…it happened.”

“Oh, I know,” he shook his head. “Nobody has time for hotel rooms anymore.”

“You are being a bit unfair, darling,” Darkness said. “We’ve done our fair share of non-hotel sex.”

“The flight was in ten minutes,”Azathoth said, thoughtfully lighting his pipe. His bubble fluid, I realized.

A bell chimed.

“Dinner is served,” the squid-butler announced.

“Ah, well then,” Azathoth said, rubbing his hands on his jacket eagerly. “All this talk has made me famished. Let’s all prepare to the dining room, everyone.”

I took a deep breath, sorting my thoughts. The dining room might make it easier; if everyone was eating, I thought, then the focus would not be on me. And after all, Azathoth thought he was

Human, and trying to maintain that illusion would mean no weird foodstuffs.

Or so I hoped.

Chapter 10 – The Dinner

“How are you doing, sweetie?” Bea whispered, rubbing her hand on my back.

I nodded, but my mouth felt like cotton. “I’m fine. A little thirsty.”

“I had them get water right from earth for you: the clear, blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.”

“That’s sweet hun,” I began. “But you know…”

“…yes?” She asked, staring up at me with those big black eyes blinking, so full of sparkles.

I smiled and kissed her. “Thank you for that.”

She beamed from ear to ear, bouncing up and down. It was worth a dry mouth to see her so happy.

The dining room was lined with dark wood on the floors and walls, dominated by a long wood table covered by a white cloth. The severed head of a squid-being hung above a massive stone fireplace,

its tentacles reaching out almost to the center of the room.

“Ah, I see you’ve met Hieronymous,” Azathoth said, pulling up alongside me and pointing with his pipe at the squid-head. “People had hunted him for years, the legendary Cosmic Horror and terror of

three planets. I was the one who got the bastard though; hit him with a crossbow as he was getting out of his car.”

I moved to respond, but there was a ringing at the door.

“Ah the Mossbergs are here,” Mother Darkness said.

Two giant pale green creatures entered, giant paramecium which floated in the air. I swallowed, suppressing the strong urge to vomit at their translucent and pulsating forms

“EUEUUUUGUGH!” One of two parameciums screamed, inches from my face.

I scanned for Bea for help.

“That’s Mr. Mossberg hun, he’s saying it’s nice to meet you,” Bea said.

“N-nice to meet you, too,” I said. I held out my hand.

“ARRRRGGHH?!” The paramecium screamed.

“It’s an Earth custom, Dink old man,” Azathoth said. “Hand shaking.”

The paramecium’s form opened into a dark void, and from it a Human hand, slick with mucus and blood like a newborn, issued forth and took my hand with a strong grip.

I rounded the table and sat next to Bea. She smiled at me and put her head on my shoulder.

I looked at the covered plates. There was no silverware, which seemed odd, but crystal goblets were at each station along with a napkin. I folded my napkin across my lap, aware it was monogrammed

with some eldritch rune.

“We’re not having Alfredo are we?” I asked.

“No, no…” Mother Darkness said with a laugh as she sat down. She sat at one end and her husband at the other. “Boy did we all chuckle when Bea explained that one to us. We’re having the

Calzoni today.”

“I like calzones…” I said, thinking it odd to have a finger food in a formal dining room.

“Splendid,” Mother Darkness said. “This is an old family recipe. I made them this morning. Gave them time to grow…”

“Grow?” I asked.

The servants removed the covers, and as the steam dissipated I saw my plate.

Four humanoid shapes were there, living dolls made of baked and browned dough. One was tied down to a small stone slab, writhing and struggling. His eyeless face was pockmarked with bubbling

tomato sauce, ‘bruises’ that I guessed were from a beating at the hands of the other three.

The others loomed over him, one with a giant knife and one with a great fork which they held each in two hands. A third wore a mask like a shaman, decorated with an angry face. He held a small

knife downward, his arms raised aloft.

I looked about, seeing similar scenes on the plates of the others.

“I-I thought we were having calzones,” I said, my eyes fixed in at the tied baked-man frantically pulling on his bonds on the stone slab.

“We are,” Mother Darkness said.

“No, he means a calzone. It’s like a pocket of dough with sauce and cheese inside,” Nyarlathotep said. “An inside-out pizza.”

“So not imbued with the breath of life or anything?” Mother Darkness asked.

Nyarlathotep shook his head.

“These are the Calzoni,” Shub Niggurath said to me. “They’re a tribe of baked people. We’re going to eat them.”

“I uh…I don’t…” I started.

“Now come now, you eat Chinese and Italian. Is this any different?”

“This is-this is one of those Alfredo things…” I said.

“Oh,” Mother Darkness said. “Whoops! Well, we have some Peculiar eyes in the fridge…”

“No, no, this is fine,” I said, reasoning this was as good as I’d get.

I stared at the plate for a moment. The Calzoni looked up at me expectantly with their eyeless faces. The chest of the tied down one rose and fell rapidly.

“You need to tell

The knife rose and fell. Tomato sauce and steam poured from the holes as the tied down baked man twitched and shuddered like a dying bug.

When the twitching stopped, the knife and fork men stepped forward. The fork-man thrust his fork into the leg of the baled corpse, and tomato sauce hissed out. The knife-man stepped forward and

ran his sharp blade along the leg, chopping it off and putting hot tomato sauce all over the floor.

The fork man pulled it away, string cheese stretching from the cut piece
As he walked towards me. He held the chunk of leg aloft towards my mouth.

I took it in my hand, looking down at the corpse and the cheese and sauce that oozed out. I put the baked leg in my mouth and bit down, the heat stinging my mouth a little.

The worst thing of all was how delicious it was. The tomato, the cheese, the crunch of the baked skin was like a mozarella stick fresher than I had ever had. And there was something else there,

something in it that was absolutely intoxicating…

“Good batch. You can really taste the fear,” Azathoth said, naming the horrid ingredient. He suddenly snatched the shaman in his hands, and with a fluid motion bit his head of.”

“Mwaaaaaah the terror…” He intoned, crunching on the mask and skull as his Calzoni fell to their knees, begging futilely for their lives.

I looked over at Bea. She had leaned down and was being fed morsels of baked man by her fork holder, and as she chewed happily she high-fived him with her finger.

She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. She saw me watching her and smiled.

“Good, huh?” She said.

I nodded, as the other left made its way to my mouth.

I ate the rest of the ‘sacrifice,’ God help me. And I’ll confess a good chunk of the priest fellow as well. Or maybe the whole of him. And a few pieces of the knife-man. The ingredients were

just so fresh…

“Don’t feel you need to spare them or anything,” Mother Darkness said. “They’ll spoil in a day or so anyways.”

After we had finished consuming the Calzoni, and the few survivors were taken away, curled in the fetal position and shuddering, Azathoth called for wine.

The squid servants emerged with long gold-colored servers, and poured the dark drink into our waiting goblets, falling with the sound of droplets and a faint hiss.

I sneaked a sip. The wine was thick, dark red and purple, almost black, and the taste was sweet and sugary, but there was a coppery taste in it as well.

Azathoth stood, his glass raised, and worked his way to standing between me and Bea.

“I’d like to make a small toast, if you’ll all indulge me. I can honestly say…” Azathoth began in his happy, fatherly tone, clasping a hand on my shoulder. “That in the short time I’ve known

this young man…I’ve grown to loathe him immeasurably. I find him shiftless and unprepossessing, and the thought of his hands on my little girl fills me with a rage that makes me want to beat him

into unconsciousness, and then keep going until I smell the decomposition.”

Eyes widened around the table. I went numb. The hand on my shoulder tightened, and I could feel the raw hatred of Azathoth burning my shoulder like molten rock. I wondered if Azathoth would eat

my soul when I was dead.

“It’s going really well,” Shub Niggurath whispered with an excited nod, her eyes sparkling

Nyarlathotep stood, solemnly, drawing a knife from his belt.

“…But, the only thing stronger than my loathing for this boy is my affection for my daughter, who would never speak to me again if I had him dismembered as he deserves. So, I guess all that

remains is for me to assent to this marriage.”

Azathoth removed his hand, and I exhaled with relief.

“Salute!” He said, with his glass raised.

We all drank. I gulped down the whole cup, my hands shaking.

“My lord,” Nyarlathotep said, sitting down as Azathoth went back to his seat. “Perhaps you are being hasty…”

“Shut the fuck up, Nyarlathotep!” Bea erupted.

“Bea, please…” Azathoth said gently. “No need to get so angry. Nyarlathotep is an old family friend. Let him speak.”

Nyarlathotep cleared his throat. “Now I recognize Shub Niggurath’s fondness for the boy, but he lacks employment. How will he care for his family? I think he should find a job before a marriage

is allowed.”

Bea looked like she would reach across the table and crush him.

“See honey? Perfectly reasonable advice,” Azathoth said.

Bea’s eye twitched. “I want to be married. I don’t want to wait while he finds a job. Besides, I’m knocked up.”

“The kid’s already a bastard,” Nyarlathotep said. “It doesn’t matter much.”

Bea’s eyes turned to her mother. “Mom, please…”

Mother Darkness sighed and looked at her husband with her astral eyes. “Honey, Bea…”

“Calm down Emily; don’t get upset,” Azathoth said holding up his hands. “Consider it a good proof of the boy’s abilities. A job isn’t too much to ask, is it?”

“I’ll get a job,” I said. “I’d bus tables to be with your daughter.”

“Now see? The lad’s got gumption. And limited ambition…but whatever.”

“I applaud the lad’s commitment as well,” Nyarlathotep said. “But maybe he needs a better job than a mere busboy. I mean, a busboy with a goat girl lover?”

Azathoth puffed his pipe thoughtfully, bubbles rising toward the ceiling.

“Again, Nyarlathotep raises a good point…” Azathoth said. “My little girl should marry an actuary or a litigator, not a busboy.”

Bea’s ears turned red.

“Dammit Daddy! Nyarlathotep’s just being a cuntblock as usual!”

“Punkin, Nyarlathotep has always done well by us,” Azathoth said.

Nyarlathotep smirked and took a sip of wine from his goblet.

“You should want your future husband to live up to his full potential, should you not?”
Nyarlathotep asked, a shit eater’s grin on his face.

Bea looked between them all, then back to me.

“Could he…could he get a job at the firm, Daddy?” Bea asked.

Azathoth laughed. “What, in the mailroom?” He said dismissively. “Bertie and the boys would have a cow if I tried to bring him on for anything else.”

“Perhaps the boy should go to school. Get a degree. A good…four…year…degree,” he said, relishing every word as he gazed with his dark eyes into mine.

“I have a four year degree,” I said.

“Oh? What in?” Nyarlathotep asked.

I cleared my throat. “Well, English.”

The whole table laughed at my degree, even the paramecium things who didn’t know what a handshake was. Only Bea didn’t laugh. She grasped my hand tightly.

“Oh shut up, all of you! You think it’s so easy to read Angels in America and write a paper on it?”

She looked at me apologetically. “Sorry, that didn’t help.”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” I said. “What would be an acceptable job to the family?”

“Well, aside from writing why the Tempest is a lesbian fantasia of postmodernist western civilization, what other talents do you have?” Azathoth asked.

“Don’t forget he can fake an orgasm into a phone,” Nyarlathotep added, taking another sip of wine. I concluded that I really, really hated that guy.

“We’ll spot him that one too. So,” Azathoth said. “Any other talents? Let me guess; you’re really good at some…vidya game.”

“As it so happens,” I said, inhaling and puffing out my chest in a moment of defiant honesty. “I’m pretty good at TIE Fighter.”

I expected raucous laughter, but instead Azathoth’s patrician eyebrows raised. He puffed on his pipe thoughtfully.

“TIE Fighter, you say?”

“You didn’t say you were good at TIE Fighter!” Bea exclaimed.

“Why, is that bad?” I asked.

“Bad?! It’s…” Bea began.

“He’s lying,” Nyarlathotep said. “He probably-”

“Enough, ‘Hotep,” Azathoth said. “How far did you get?”

“Well, I beat it a few times. I actually did a let’s play on youtube-”

“Which one?”

“My account is anon22781,” I said.

Azathoth puffed his pipe. “I’ve seen it. You’re good. Real good.”

“Could you get him in to the Academy, Daddy?” Bea said.

“Academy?” I asked.

“The Imperial Naval Academy,” Mother Darkness said. “My dear husband is an alumnus.”

“I used to wear the ol’ Hose and Mask once upon a time,” Azathoth said wistfully. “Cut my teeth on TIE Bomber runs on Kashyyk. Nyarlathotep was there, too. The fires in the jungle, watching the

little hairballs fall to their fiery deaths…so beautiful.” He regarded me with admiration. “I could make a few calls. Interested?”

“I ah, yeah!” I said.

“You um, sure about this, boss?” Nyarlathotep said. “The old squadron’s honor-”

“Will be well served. The boy has promise, Hotep” Azathoth said. “We helped develop that software to find recruits just like him. I’ve seen his performance. He’s good. Do a tour in the

Imperial Navy, young man, and not only will there be a job at the Firm for you, but you will be a partner inside of a year. Bertie and the boys are all Hose and Mask men.”

I sighed. “No one cares who you are until you put on the mask.”

He laughed, slapping a hand on my back. “Well said. I’ll call Sheev right now. He’s a big wheel in the Empire. You’ll be in a flight suit by next month, ready to blast some rebel filth.”

Azathoth left the room with quick strides, heading for the brass telephone in the hallway. I heard him crank the ringer furiously.

“…Sarah? Get me Sheev’s office care of the old folk’s home….” Azathoth said, his voice echoing down the hall.

“Wow! A TIE Fighter pilot!” Bea said. She bounced up and down, clapping her hands. She gave me a big kiss on the cheek. “I get to be the girlfriend of a TIE Fighter pilot! I was afraid you’d

get a job as a barista or some shit and I’d have to pretend I was proud, but this is-this is wonderful!”

“You guys really like TIE Fighter pilots?” I asked, recalling the barista application I had passed in a fee days ago with shame.

“Oh absolutely. Flying out there, no shields, just your wiles and your speed to keep you safe…” Bea’s nostrils flared . “It’s so brave. I’ll confess TIE Fighter pilots always kinda made me a

little excited.”

Her smile faded.

“You um, you do want to do that, right? You don’t have to, I mean that barista crack-”

“No, it’s fine,” I said eagerly. “I mean, I liked TIE Fighter…I hope that translates over to real space combat. But um…isn’t the Empire the bad guys?”

“If by ‘bad’ you mean AWESOME!” Bea said.

“Everyone at this table has done far, far worse things than the Empire,” Nyarlathotep said, swirling his drink in his goblet. “And in fact, your betrothed did worse things to Alderan than the

Empire did. I’ll have to dust off my uniform…”

“Why?” I asked.

“The big guy’s got his mind set that you are going to be an ace TIE Fighter pilot now,” Nyarlathotep said. “I’ll make sure your service doesn’t result in, say, a force choke or lightning blast, to

name a few random examples. I can help you fit in, not stick out too much. Keep the backstabbers and such at bay.”

“I don’t trust you,” I said.

“That is wise and well-founded. I despise Humans and was actively trying to sabotage you and Bea purely to amuse myself,” he said. “But I never countermand the big guy. Ever. Ever.”

“It’s true, he doesn’t,” Bea said.

“The only thing is Bea…” I took her hands. “does this mean we won’t see each other?”

“Fuck no. I’ll be in your bunk every night,” Bea said.

“The boy will need to focus on his duty, Bea,” Nyarlathotep said, staring at her with dark eyes. “You know this. You can come when we go on shore leave, like the other girlfriends and wives do.

A tour is a year. You can bear up.”

“Well…I suppose a year. You’ll miss poor Bastard’s birth,” Bea said, her eyes cloudy and sad.

“You sure you want this?” I asked.

“Well it’s what you want that matters here, hun. It’s your life. I don’t want to hold you back…”

“You couldn’t. It matters to me what you want,” I said. “I will do it. To prove myself worthy of you. I want to.”

Bea smiled. “You don’t need to prove yourself to me…but it is father’s price for a wedding…”

“Then it’s no decision at all. I want to marry you. One year,” I said. “I’ll fly TIE Fighters for a year.”

Chapter 11 – Delivery

I pushed forward the throttle on my Interceptor to maximum. I’d flown in many craft in the previous four months: bombers, the TIE itself, gunboats, even the Advanced, but I always loved the

Interceptor the best. Fast and sleek, only the A-Wing could rival its speed. I felt like an artist in it, weaving through blaster fire and lighting up targets.

But right now my mind was elsewhere. Bea…

“We’re not going to make it,” I said through my comm, dejectedly, as the distant system seemed to grow no closer to us.

“Calm down, hotshot,” Nyarlathotep responded, his voice harsh with the static of transmission. “If we miss it, big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” I said. “I’m supposed to be there.”

“Why? Mother Darkness and your bethrothed have done this a few million times. And that is not exaggeration.”

Nyarlathotep’s Interceptor briefly shot ahead of mine as we made a turn, bringing the spec that was the Star Destroyer Imperius into sight. So far away. I cursed under my breath and uselessly

pushed my foot further against the throttle.

“That’s not the point. It’s an important moment,” I said, watching little bits of metal and rock of indeterminate origin zip past my ship. “It’s tradition.”

“Recent tradition,” Nyarlathotep grumbled. “Time was you’d pace the waiting room smoking cigarettes. Now nobody smokes anymore. Before that your people would be outside rattling bones or-”

The comm cut abruptly.

“Didn’t copy that, Nar,” I said, putting a hand to the microphone at my throat. “Repeat transmission.”

“We got something, Gold One,” he responded. “Will be in scan range soon.”

Red dots. Four of them, closing fast. I flipped my scanner and saw the 3-D shape of an A-Wing fill my display. The last thing I needed right now.

“Ah, shit,” I growled. We’d never outrun them: any other rebel ship and we would outpace them easily, but the A-Wing was the faster craft, and would overtake us given the distance remaining to the

Imperius.

I switched to my concussion missiles and tilted the control wheel, bracing my stomach against the heavy forces of the turn. I had three missiles left from my mission. I brought my craft around to

face the three specs in my sights, flickering before me as they moved.

It wasn’t long before I heard the cheery beep of my targeting computer as I lined up on one of the A-Wings. I wouldn’t try to conserve them; just try to overwhelm one and even up the odds.

When my reticule turned red I onloaded on the poor bastard. One missile went wide as the A-Wing dodged, but two of my missiles found purchase, and the A-Wing erupted in a flash of light, toppling

end over end into a drifting wreck.

Three against two, now, I whispered to myself. Of course, the A-Wing was faster, and had shields, but at least we were more maneuverable.

Torching one of their friends removed any compunction the rebels had against using their own concussion missiles, and a swarm of orange appeared on my screen as every sensor I had began blaring at

me. This wasn’t exactly unexpected.

I switched targeting and blasted one of the missiles out of the sky, turning hard as the others settled in behind me.

“Little help,” I said into the comm.

The blaring of the sensors in my cockpit quickly subsided as Nyarlathotep targeted and blasted each missile swiftly.

“That happens when you stick your dick in a hornet’s nest,” he said. I heard blaster fire over his comm unit, and the hiss of burning electronics. “Got them on me now.”

Nyarlathotep could crush the A-Wings in a few thousand different ways, of course. He could rend their minds apart, or form lightning storms, or summon fireballs, or go in horror cloud form and

just play with them like a toddler with bathtub toys. But he saw this whole adventure as a game of TIE fighter; he played by the rules, used a Human body, kept himself to Human reaction times.

If he died, it was just another body, and he’d come back again. His objective was to keep me alive as a Human pilot.

Beyond that there was no such intervention. Azathoth willed his daughter to marry a dashing fighter ace, not a pretend one. If I died, I died. I guessed that Shub-Niggurath would probably turn

the Rebellion into a quivering mass of agony and pain in pure rage, but that would do me little good. Best for everyone if I just stayed alive.

Nyarlathotep was leading the A-Wings on a merry chase, doing turns they doubtless thought were impossible. He zipped past me, nearly clipping my wing, as I weaved through red blaster fire and

hooked around onto the tail of one of the A-Wings.

I switched lasers to quad shot as my target desperately tried to shake me, but I was the better pilot, and I was with him on every turn. After a few hits, his shields were down, and after a few

more his craft erupted in fire and I soared through the explosion, my fighter rattled by the flames.

I turned to watch Nyarlathotep, green blaster fire spewing from his craft, as an A-Wing exploded end over end. It was too much for the last pilot, who turned and fled, his afterburners blazing.

“Not bad,” Nyarlathotep said, turning back toward the distant spec. “Let’s go.”

I exhaled. “I don’t think we’ll make it.”

“We’ll make it.”

The rest of the flight was interminable waiting for the Imperius to get larger, to fill my screen and tractor beam me back aboard so I could get going.

I piled out of the ship as the crews rushed over to service it. I stopped to inspect a blast hole in my left wing. It was more serious than I would have liked, a gift from an X-Wing pilot before

I got the upper hand. A close call, again, and one I could not afford to risk anymore. I tugged off my helmet and took in a deep breath of non-tube air.

Nyarlathotep joined up alongside me, still in his mask. I guessed beneath it he was no linger a swarthy human, but probably some squid faced nightmare.

Captain Rugrid stood on the flight deck, hands behind his back, to greet Nyarlathotep and me. Rugrid was a good man, loyal to the Empire and competent to a fault.

“Well met, Anon,” The Captain said in his crisp, English-sounding accent. “The freighter shipments have reached their destination. Everything is on schedule again. I’ve informed the Admiral of

our success and High Command is pleased. Good work.”

“By your leave, sir, I need a shuttlecraft with hyperdrive as soon as possible,” I said.

He frowned at me. “You still have to be debriefed, and a shuttlecraft is not-”

“We must go,” Nyarlathotep intoned through his mask. “Azathoth wills it.”

Rugrid bowed. The Emperor himself had informed him of the nature of our service. Even if he hadn’t, few beings withstood Nyarlathotep when he wanted something. “As you wish, Lord Nyarlathotep.

If I may inquire-”

“I don’t recommend it,” Nyarlathotep responded.

“As you wish my Lord,” Rugrid said, tugging his shirt until there were no wrinkles. He motioned to a passing serviceman. “Corporal, ready one of our Lamda shuttles.”

Nyarlathotep always insisted on flying shuttles, which worked out well because he knew how to get the damn thing into teleport mode. It was less than a blinking of an eye and we had traveled

across the universe.

The shuttle pulled out of hyper-hyperspace just above earth, and Nyarlathotep piloted the ship towards a small Maine town. Visibility grew poor due to clouds and fog.

“So what’s the deal with Silent Hill?” I asked Nyarlathotep.

“You mean like what’s the deal with airplane peanuts?”

“I mean what’s going on there.”

He took a deep breath. “It’s a vacation spot. For some reason Bea wanted her son born on Earth, but we needed to make sure it was in a place properly anchored to a reality sufficient to handle

him. Alchemilia is the best nightmare hospital on earth and the hell world or fog world should suffice to bear him.”

“Yeah, I got all that from Bea. I mean Alessa, the Order god, that stuff. What the hell is the Order god?”

“She’s a Taurus. We dated but it didn’t work out. She’s kinda cute. A bit clingy. She’s got like seventeen names. Pyramid Head’s a bro. Brace for landing.”

The craft landed with a thud and a hiss.

We passed swiftly into fogworld as we huffed on foot to the hospital, then into the rusted red dimension as we neared the front gates, the sirens blaring in the distance as hideous things shambled

all around us and my commlink blared static.

As we passed through the doors of Alchemilia, the nurses took double takes at us. One put a hand to her chest, another fanned her bandage-covered head. I heard a whistle, which was quite an

achievement for them.

“They love the Imperial uniform,” Nyarlathotep said, dodging a pinch aimed at his rear.

“I’m taken, girls!” I said as I jumped from a pinch. “My girl’s in maternity.”

That was enough to part the crowds. My guess was only one being was in giving birth here, and they wouldn’t want any piece of a yandere goat girl who could tear a galaxy asunder.

I walked to the hospital directory, and through the splattered blood and rust I made out the words ‘maternity.’

“Up the stairs,” I said.

The nurse behind the counter looked up, her bandaged face quizzical.

“H-Hi. I’m looking for Shub-Niggurath…”

The nurse shot backward. Two others poked their heads out from the office.

Oh God, I realized to my horror. They recognize my voice. They had been callers of mine, in that time before I was a hotshot TIE Fighter pilot.

Nyarlathotep picked up on it, too. I heard his smug laughter, the bastard. He would pick up on it. His perception was downright frightening.

“Shub-Niggurath, please,” I reiterated.

The nurse started moving her jaw, but no sound came out.

“You’re um…you’ll need to write it,” I said. “Or…tap it out.”

Two of the nurses put hands to their soiled face-bandages, tittering to themselves. Damned minxes, I thought to myself.

“She said 201, down the hall,” Nyarlathotep said.

She nodded.

“Oh, okay…h-how are things going?”

More jaw movements.

“She says Bea’s dilated, then eroded. Her lower flesh vines have stopped killing nurses and have staked out appropriate ground, so it should be soon,” Nyarlathotep translated.

“Okay, thank you,” I said to the nurse, who nodded.

We headed down the hallway as I counted room numbers. Half the markers were gone and the rooms in ruins, but as we neared the proper room the lights were on, bathing the hospital in white light.

Several nurses were gathered around the door, and something was moving inside, thrashing like whips.

Even in the hell world dimension of silent hill, my Shub Niggurath stood out.

Long tendrils writhed and moved down the hallway, rattling with a hiss. At their ends were eyeless medusa heads, with ‘hair’ of earthworms that wriggled as though they were dying in the sun.

Their full lips were filled with razor-sharp teeth.

The tendrils hissed at an approaching nurse, and with violent force knocked her backward down the long hall past the nurse’s station. A mannequin attempted to skitter by, but several tendrils fell

upon it, deftly ripping it to shreds with their teeth until they was nothing but a patch of dark red.

“Here it is,” Nyarlathotep said. “Let’s go.”

The tendrils hissed briefly at Nyarlathotep as he approached, but as their nostrils flared, they grudingly closed their mouths and let him pass. Nyarlathotep had never broken stride, seemingly

unconcerned even if they had tried to stop him.

Swallowing, it was my turn.

A tendril stopped me, baring its teeth, but only until it caught my scent. Its mouth opened wide, and it emitted an excited squeak. A moment later it lunged.

The tendril deftly wrapped itself around me in a coil embrace, my arms stuck at my sides, as it began nuzzling me with its ‘cheek’ and emitting a high-pitched trill.

The other tendrils began to gather, all wriggling around me, pressing in for a chance to cuddle.

“Okay, girls…” I managed to squeak out. “Let me pass. We can play later, I missed you too.”

They wouldn’t budge. They kept nuzzling and cuddling.

“Alright, one head pat each,” I said.

I was released as the tendrils line up eagerly for their headpats. I caught a couple sneaking back into line, but for the most part they were well behaved.

They pushed me into the room. In the center, surrounded by hooded chanting cultists, was my Shub Niggurath. She looked tired and uncomfortable, but otherwise in good spirits.

Bea saw me, and her face lit up.

“Hun!” She exclaimed in her indoor voice, which meant…

Azathoth sat in one corner, in an armchair, reading a leather book called “EYE.” It was upside-down in his hands.

He slammed the book when he saw me.

“Son!” He exclaimed, rushing over to embrace me. “We’ll half to catch up. I heard about the battle of Sullust. What a victory! I would have loved to have a chance at flying an assault gunboat-”

“Darling,” Mother darkness said as gently as she could. She was at her daughter’s side, holding her hand. Or rather, appendages were intertwined.

“Ah yes. The big moment. I’m just here in case,” he said.

“In case of what?”

“Why in case I have to eat the little fella,” he said warmly. “Can’t have anybody rival the old man, son. Not a pleasant job, but it rarely happens nowadays.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Nyarlathotep said. “It was only an issue when Bea dated powerful beings?”

“Should I be insulted?”

“You aren’t powerful enough for me to care,” Nyarlathotep said. He chuckled and winked. “You are a credit to the squadron though.”

“Enough squad talk,” Bea said. “Let me have my Anon.”

I went to her side and took her hand, giving her a kiss.

“I’m so, so happy you made it,” she said. “I missed you. God damn you look great in that uniform.”

I chuckled. “It’s a very snug fit. Are you alright?”

“Oh sure. This is old hat to me,
Sweetie. I’ve had over a thousand kids. Humanoid births are always kind of annoying, but then at least they don’t chew their way out. I’ve birthed a few chestbursters in my time and boy howdy is

that a rough ache for a few days!”

“My lord…” One of the cultists said, approaching me in a stoop with his head low. “Fortunate are you, seed-giver! You have had congress with the Hell mother! Ia seedgiver! May the ancients

smile on you!”

“Uh, likewise,” I said.

“It is time for the ritual of summoning. The honor is yours.”

He held out a long blade, jagged like a lightning bolt.

“What’s this for?” I asked, taking the blade. The handle was ice cold and seemed to vibrate as though something were inside it.

“The sacrifice, my lord,” the cultist whispered.

A man was brought in, screaming in some language I couldn’t make out. His tan skin was marked with tattoos.

“What’s this do?” I asked Mother Darkness. “Do we need this to birth the child?”

She shrugged. “Not really. It just makes them feel like they did something.”

I shook my head. “No. I won’t murder a man! This isn’t right!”

“Hun, please,” Bea said, grimacing for a moment. “It’s tradition, and it’s just the one. You’ll hurt the cultists’ feelings…”

“This is insane!” I shouted. I turned toward the cultists. “Can’t we just explain to them…”

I squinted. Something was on the man’s shoulder: a red mark. “What is that symbol?” I asked.

The cultists brought the terrified man closer. I leaned in. I felt my blood run cold. I was overcome with the tingling numbness I felt when I had a rebel in my sights.

“…Rogue squadron?” I whispered, barely able to contain my rage.

The man shook his head, and began babbling something in a language I now recognized: Huttese.

“Secure him,” I snarled.

The rebel scum’s eyes bulged as the cultists tugged him downward. He began kicking, but it was no use. The cultists lashed him to floor.

“Ia, Shub Niggurath! Ia Hell Mother!” A woman shouted. I recognized her: she was our waitress on our first date.

I raised up the knife and brought it down, over and over again. One less rebel. The blood flowed underneath Bea’s hospital bed.

“Oooh,” Bea said with a grimace. “I feel the baby coming.”

“I thought-”

“Coincidence,” Mother Darkness said. “It’s always a coincidence.”

Perhaps its best to just gloss over what happened in that birthing room. Suffice to say when your worshippers throw up, you have gone past the Event Horizon.

I looked down at my child. My heart stopped for a moment. Mother Darkness gasped. Tears fell from Azathoth’s eyes.

“He’s…he’s beautiful…” Azathoth said. “An intimidating specimen.”

He grasped the child up, and for a moment he looked like Cronus holding Zeus, and I was afraid.

But instead he patted the boy’s mane of black hair, and handed him back to Bea.

Bea was radiant. Her tired little goat face was covered in sweat, but there was a serene look of pure joy on her face. I leaned over and kissed her, and she pressed against me.

“Look at him,” she whispered, nuzzling the boy to her chest. “They’ll write songs about him.”

“He’ll grow up to be the strongest lad in the village,” Nyarlathotep said, for once seemingly in awe. “Perhaps he’ll even eat five dozen eggs a day.”

I smiled. My son stared up at me with his sky-blue eyes. There were little skulls in them.

“His name isn’t Bastard,” I said.

Bea smiled and shook her head.

“We shall name him,” I began, taking a deep breath. I realized I wasn’t really naming him; I was merely revealing that which he already was. “His name…is Gaston.”

Back to Main Page

Pastebin Links – https://pastebin.com/jgmH1dBY

We rode in silence away from my mother’s house, down endless miles of freeway. Bea rested her head on my shoulder.

==WHERE ARE WE HEADED?==

“I’m not sure,” I said with a sigh, still thinking about my mother and my father. “I guess just away. We should head home soon I guess.”

==WELL, WE’VE GOT A FEW HOURS BEFORE WE NEED TO GET HOME AND WE’RE BACK ON EARTH. YOU WANT TO HIT UP A BLOCKBUSTER OR SOMETHING?==

I laughed.

==WHAT?==

“Blockbuster’s been defunct for like a decade, sweetie.”

==REALLY? HOW’S RADIO SHACK DOING?==

“Kinda bad.”

==WELL DARN. WHERE WILL WE GET RF MODULATORS?==

“We don’t need any. All our TVs have Rokus now.”

==I GUESS. SO WHAT’S EVEN ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE?==

“There’s a few things here besides Blockbuster and Radio Shack.”

==THAT’S WHAT YOU GUYS WERE KNOWN FOR.==

“We could always go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, or see the Great Wall of China, or the Pyramids.”

Bea rolled her eyes.

==NOT IMPRESSIVE.==

“Really?”

==NYARL BUILT ALL THOSE THINGS. HE GOT BETTER AT IT ELSEWHERE. YOU SHOULD SEE THE SUPER PYRAMIDS. LET’S JUST GO FIND A CHEAP MOTEL AND FUCK.==

I laughed and patted Bea’s swollen belly, steering with my other hand as we raced down the highway.

“I think that isn’t a good idea.”

Bea smiled impishly and countered with a hand on my crotch.

==YOU’VE NEVER OBJECTED BEFORE TO SOME PREGGO ACTION.==

“You’re about to pop though,” I said, as Bea’s fingers squeezed at my balls. “I think I’m going to cause a head injury,” I said.

==THAT’S RIDICULOUS. MY CERVIX HAS WITHSTOOD A MEGATON WARHEAD.==

“I know it has, hun. It’s a fine cervix. It’s just a mental thing.”

Bea folded her arms and frowned.

==I WISH THE KIDS WOULD JUST COME OUT.==

“So you do think it’s more than one?”

==YEP. FEELS JUST LIKE ORUS AND ERUS.==

“Great,” I said, recalling a memory from long ago, from the depths of Hastur’s longterm memory. A two story pinkish child flailing in rage as she refused to put on a fifty-armed longsleeve shirt. The effort of dressing her took eight hours. Erus was bigger, but slightly less fiesty.

==YOU’RE NOT UPSET ARE YOU?==

“What? No. Orus and Erus are good kids,” I responded. “Just…a lot of work.”

==WHAT KID WASN’T?==

“That’s true. Even Frank turned out to be a handful.”

We drove past a small mall with glowing signs, a patch of bright lights in the darkness of the night. Bea tapped my arm excitedly.

==OOOOOH, A SETTLEMENT! WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE IS IN THE BAZAAR?==

“They call them malls here,” I said. I squinted at the signs as they grew larger and in focus. “Looks like there’s a few chain restaurants, a theater, a-“

==A THEATER?!==

Bea bounced up and down.

==LET’S SEE A MOVIE!==

“What’s even playing?”

==WHO CARES? LET’S SNUGGLE IN THE SEATS AND MUNCH ON SOME FAUX-BUTTERED POPCORN. WE’LL SEE WHAT MAGIC BARTERTOWN HAS TO OFFER US.==

“Tinseltown,” I said, lighting the ramp with the flashing red of my directional.

==WHAT?==

“Hollywood is called Tinseltown.”

==WHY WOULD THEY CALL IT THAT?==

“Well tinsel is glittering and shiny, like Hollywood.”

==BARTERTOWN MAKES MORE SENSE. DADDY ALWAYS SAID HOLLYWOOD WAS FULL OF ‘MERCHANTS.’ HE CALLED THEM HOOKNOSED KIKE BAS-==

“Whelp, here we are,” I said, pulling into the parking lot. The theater looked about as run down as the rest of earth. The owners had long given up on updating the signs which indicated what movies were playing, and half the letters in the word ‘Cinema’ had dimmed. Out front a group of ‘youths’ congregated with hoods drawn over their faces, their sneakers bright as halogen lamps.

I walked around the car and opened the door for my goat girl. Despite the rundown nature of the theater, she smiled as she exited. She glanced up with her black eyes wide as if she were seeing a grand amphitheater.

==ARE WE DRESSED APPROPRIATELY?==

I watched as several bearded nu-males in their 20s walked past, wearing 1980s arcade characters on their shirts.

“We’re fine.”

Bea grasped my hand and tugged it towards the ticket booth.

==WELL LET’S GO!==

She half-ran excitedly until we arrived at several posters taped to the glass doors. She stopped as she considered.

==SO WHAT DO WE SEE? HEY, HOW ABOUT THAT ONE, BOSS BABY?!==

I stared at the poster of a business-suit wearing baby, his eyebrow raised in the Dreamworks fashion. “That will probably be bad,” I pronounced.

Bea blinked at me innocently.

==YOU THINK?==

“Yeah.”

==HUH. OKAY, HOW ABOUT SPIDER MAN REBOOT VIII?==

I shuddered. “That’s gonna suck.”

Bea’s lower lip quivered.

==OH COME ON. YOU’RE GOING TO DO THAT FOR EVERY MOVIE.==

“I’m sorry, hun,” I said with a sigh. “Well…Boss Baby is starting in fifteen minutes. Alright, let me get tickets.”

Bea smiled widely and gave me a nuzzle.

I approached the counter, Bea grinning as her goat ears flopped up and down. Anything was worth it to make her happy, even seeing what amounted to the stupidest, most half-assed movie concept I’d ever heard of.

“Two for…” I took a deep breath. “Boss Baby,” I whispered through my teeth.

The pock-marked teen behind the glass stared at me for a moment. His face twisted into a look of revulsion and disgust, but as our eyes met I saw pity in them, and that was worse. He pressed a few buttons with his thin fingers. The tickets rose into the air like flowers over a criminal’s grave.

I snatched them and tossed green currency across the glass. The youth glared at this foreign rarity called cash and with wavering hands he collected and counted, returning to me several dollars.

After we handed the tickets to a portly girl sitting on a stool, we were in the lobby. The theater was fairly deserted.

==SHOULD WE GET POPCORN?==

I looked at the twelve blue-shirted employees at the concessions stand, all staring at me with a look of dread.

“Yeah, sure. You go ahead in.”

I ordered a small bag of popcorn and two drinks, priced sensibly at eighty dollars.

The theater was empty. That was not surprising. But what was surprising was I did not see Shub Niggurath in any of the seats. In general it was hard to miss her, but the seats were all folded and the theater was bare, save for the light of the projector and still shots of Coca Cola on the screen. I was about to check if I was in the right theater or not when I saw motion from the very front row.

==UP HERE!==

I sighed. Bea waved happily from her seat centimeters from the giant screen.

“Why up front?” I whispered.

==SO WE ARE CLOSE AS POSSIBLE SILLY!==

I briefly considered raising an objection, but seeing Boss Baby was going to suck anyway, so I just walked to the very first row.

==THE PREVIEWS ARE STARTING! I LOVE THIS PART…==

I smiled and wrapped my arm around her, and Bea tilted her head onto my shoulder. Suddenly Boss Baby didn’t seem like it would be so bad.

The screen lit with a green box, and the words warning us that all audiences could be subjected to what was coming. The previews began. The first preview was for a remake of Treasure of Sierra Madre starring Seth Rogen. Instead of gold, they were looking for weed.

“Good God this is awful,” I whispered as Seth Rogen embarked on his quest on a donkey which farted and stank out poor Idris Elba.

==HOW DOES HE GET WORK?==

“I suspect it’s those merchants your father was talking about.”

The next preview was for Spiderman Reboot VII. The Sony logo shown, and then a geeky looking teen with a voice-over describing his life.

==IS THAT SPIDER MAN?==

“I would think so.”

==WHO’S THAT OLD MAN?==

“That’s Stan Lee. He has cameos in all these movies.”

In the immense light of the screen I could see Bea furrow her brow.

==WHY IS HE PISSING INTO THAT SKULL?==

“That’s Jack Kirby,” I responded, yawning.

==OHHHHH.==

The trailer continued onward. CGI happened, and then a joke about Peter Parker having no money.

==WHY IS SPIDERMAN SO POOR?==

“That’s his gimmick. He’s a geek who isn’t popular and he scrapes by. And the city says he’s a menace. He’s the anti-batman.”

==WHAT’S HE GOT AGAINST BATMAN?==

“I mean anti as in opposite, not against.”

Bea stared forward, watching intently.

==I LIKE BATMAN. WILL BATMAN BE IN THE SPIDERMAN MOVIE?==

“Batman’s DC and Spiderman is Marvel. They don’t do crossovers between the two except frequently and for money.”

==SO THEY’LL DO IT SOON?==

“Yeah, probably in a few years. Bartertown gotta barter after all.”

We watched about thirty minutes more of commercials, most of them remakes or reboots. All of them were starring Idris Elba in the leading role. Tess of the d’Urbervilles was particularly haunting.

After the twentieth preview, the house lights dimmed, and the familiar logo of a child fishing off the moon filled the screen. Boss Baby began. The narrator began talking about his life, and then the baby showed up in his business suit. My IQ dropped, and I thought my eyes would melt in my skull.

I kept my mouth shut as Bea watched with a blank expression. She was either bored to tears or enraptured. At about the forty minute mark, Bea looked over her shoulder at the empty theater behind us. She leaned over to me.

==WELL THIS MOVIE IS TERRIBLE, DON’T YOU THINK?==

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked, getting ready to pick up our trash.

==YEP. I’LL JUST GO DOWN ON YOU.==

I dropped the popcorn and I heard kernels spread under the seat. “What?”

==THE THEATER’S EMPTY. BOSS BABY WAS A SURE THING ON THAT COUNT.==

Bea jumped out of her seat -there was ample room since we were in the front -and put her face into my lap with a smile.

“Wait a minute…” I said as her fingers worked at my zipper. “You didn’t care about a movie at all. You just wanted to suck me off in public!”

==YOU’RE SO GULLIBLE SOMETIMES. I LOVE IT.==

She pulled my cock out into the open and took it into her mouth.

“Bea, we can’t…” I said, moaning slightly at the pleasure. I looked over my shoulder.

She took me out with a pop.

==WHAT, YOU DON’T WANT TO FUCK YOUR VERY PREGNANT GOAT GIRL IN AN EMPTY THEATER? TOO RAUNCHY? AFRAID SOMEONE WILL WALK IN AND SEE?==

My cock hardened. Bea smiled.

==I THOUGHT SO.==

She worked me over expertly, sucking and slurping with her soft velvety mouth as she stared up at me with those enrapturing eyes.

It wasn’t long before I was bucking my hips into her face. My hands found their way to her goat ears, tugging on them gently like handles as I thrusted.

When the fulminations came I heard her moan, and felt the vibrations against my cock. I emptied into her closed mouth and pulsed against the sides of her throat. She swallowed and then rested her head on my lap. I crumpled into the seat, panting.

Bea stared up at me triumphantly. But her face contorted, and she suddenly looked like something had hit her in the stomach.

==UH OH==

“What?” I said, my heart still pounding from the near mind-shattering blowjob.

==MY WATER JUST BROKE.==

I shot up in my seat.

“What?!” I yelled.

==THE BABIES ARE COMING NOW.==

I stood and fastened my pants.”Hang on,” I said,
fumbling in the dark. “Let me get you to the car.”

Bea laid down on the floor. Her chest rose and fell rapidly.

==NOPE. NOT GONNA MAKE IT.==

“T-that quick?”

==SEE FOR YOURSELF.==

I saw Bea’s lower half mold into tentacles. The ‘girls’ began to spread out, securing the area where the child – or children – would be born. The tentacles streamed for the lobby and exits, and as the doors burst open and flooded the theater with light, I heard terrified screams from beyond.

Worst of all, Boss Baby continued onward pitilessly above us.

==BETTER CALL MOM AND DAD, HUN.==

I cleared my throat. “It’s Happening!” I shouted as loud as I could, waving my hands.

Azathoth, Mother Darkness, and Nyarlathotep arrived. Mother Darkness raced over to Bea and began to make ready while Nyarlathotep exited the theater with the tentacle-girls.

“Ah, Anon,” Azathoth said, slapping me on the back. “We missed you at work the last few weeks.”

“I’ve only been gone a few days,” I responded.

Azathoth tilted his head back. “Oh. Well, carry on then.”

“There are SWAT teams encircling the theater. And news vans,” Nyarlathotep said. “They’ll be assaulting soon.”

“Best go take care of that,” Azahoth said to me, tapping his pipe on the wall.

“You might be better suited to this, Dad,” I suggested meekly.

“Now, now Anon, I have my duties here,” Azathoth said. “I have to stick around, consume the little one if necessary…Unless you want to try doing it.”

I shook my head, recalling the last time I had filled in for a baby eating. “I’ll go handle the SWAT teams,” I said, preparing to deal with the irritation of being shot.

As it turned out, the problem had largely resolved itself. The World Cabal had heard we were in the area and descended on the spot rapidly.

When I made it to the concessions stand, several hooded figures were gathered in a half-circle. Dead SWAT officers lay at their feet, as their black-clad soldiers with heavy weapons patrolled. The tentacles had lined up around them, snarling and baring their teeth.

“A mortal!” One of the hooded figures hissed. He held up a bony finger. “Remove him! Ia, Azathoth! Ia, Shub Niggurath!”

The black-clad soldiers raised their weapons at me and fired. I changed forms swiftly to the Feaster from Afar. The bullets passed through my changed matter, as meaningless as a radio wave to normal flesh. Bea’s tentacles struck at the fools who attacked her mate, killing the black-clad soldiers to a man and filling the lobby with blood and screams. I grasped the hooded man who had spoke, and dug my tendrils into his brain as the sound of munching bones filled the lobby.

As chunks of brain traveled down my tendrils and filled my belly I learned many fascinating things about the Earth; the truth about World War I, the horrible secret about the Roman Second Triumvirate, and why JFK had to die. The other hooded figures fell to their knees.

“Ia, Unspeakable one!” They shouted.

“UEGGGGHH!” I responded as eloquently as I could. Feaster from Afar form was not exactly a silver tongue.

“Please, my lord,” a sickly and old woman pleaded from beneath a rough-fiber hood. “We did not recognize you. We are the Cabal that runs the Earth. We stand ready to do homage to your newborn.”

I changed form back to my human self. There was only one thing I could say to the rulers of the earth, on behalf of all mankind. My nostrils flared. I pointed with a finger at the picture of Boss Baby above the door.

“Explain yourselves,” I growled.

The hooded figures stared forward for a moment in silence.

“Many things must be done to keep the Uninitiated in line, Your Yellowness,” a man with a distinct southern accent said.

“And you feel you are Initiated?” I asked.

The robed figures betrayed no movement, but I could smell their dread.

“Select one of your number and cave in his or her skull. This shall be an homage to us,” I said. It was not my most clever work but there was a certain entertainment to crudity.

“Chose the Old One,” the southern voice said. “The loser.”

The old woman looked at the others. “You bastard! After all the pizza I let you fuck…”

A fist connected with her skull, then others. The cultists were a savage lot, and the old woman was frail, and she did not last long. The cloaked figures wailed and raged, their dark robes fluttering. As the blood from the old hag’s skull spread outward across the white and blue tiled floor. I nodded. The sacrifice would be acceptable.

“Now get out,” I said. “And take the press and the rest of the Police with you.”

I turned walked back to the theater, confident my instructions would be followed. Nyarlathotep was outside of the Boss Baby theater, texting someone on his phone. He looked up at me as I approached.

“So it’s done,” Nyarlathotep said. “I was just letting Bertie know you’ll be out for a while. Bea’s fine. Everyone’s healthy, no one was eaten. All your sons are accounted for. “

“All my sons? So more than twins?”

“Considerably.”

“What’s considerable? Octuplets?”

Nyarlathotep stared at me and blinked.

“Like a dozen? A score? What?”

“A Century,” Nyarlathotep said.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if you’ll recall your Roman Legionnaire units, a Century is the smallest part of a cohort…”

“I’m familiar. I did a few stints in the cavalry. So there was a century of babies?” I asked.

“That’s an interesting question to unpack. Technically they are babies, but that is misleading. It’s a hundred and sixty grown men. My Latin is rusty but they say they are from Legatio IX Hispania. From the first cohort.”

“…what?”

“They are really, really confused, but Bea is very happy and they seem appropriately affectionate toward her. The Primus Pilum has requested an audience with you.”

“Okay, well, where is he?”

“I think he’s with Bea.”

I entered the theater. It looked about as normal, except for the tentacles feverishly patrolling while one hundred and sixty confused Roman Legionnaires sat in the seats, all staring at the credits for Boss Baby and pointing at the screen in confusion while they heatedly talked about what they had just seen.

Azathoth and Mother Darkness were making out in one of the seats towards the back of the theater. Bea sat up at the front, with an ornately helmed Roman soldier standing near her. He shot to attention as Nyarlathotep and I approached.

The Primus Pilum looked to be about forty, a hardened warrior with his mother’s black eyes and my brow. His skin was bronzed and weathered by the sun. He knelt by his mother, holding her hand dutifully.

“Hey honey,” Bea said in indoor voice. “This is Gaius Bibulous Anonymous Hasturius, Primus Pilum of the ninth legion.”

“Pater?” He said, clearing his throat.

I nodded.

He stood and faced me. His eyes filled with tears and he smiled, and for a moment I saw his mother.

We embraced.

“Pater…”

“Licuit,” I began. “Et cubitum ire. Quod natum est de gula non sit ex inferno et pigrum vobis requiem.”

Anonymous Hasturius laughed and patted me on the shoulder. He yawned.

“Ut sapiens est, Pater,” he responded. “Non oportet fratres mei cum in cibum.”

“We’ll get you guys food soon,” I responded. “Now kiss your mother and take your leave.”

Anonymous Hasturius leaned down and kissed Bea on the cheek. She smiled.

“How do you feel, hun?” I asked.

“Pretty good, considering I birthed a legion,” she said.

I took her hand into mine.

“The house is going to be crowded,” I said.

“We shall have to take them on campaign when the snows clear. Gaston will expect a command,” Bea said.

“Well, I suspect his grandfather will want one, too,” I said, watching as Azathoth took a gladius and began hacking at the air with a frightening gleam in his eye.

Bea laughed. “I’m so happy right now. I love you Anon.”

I kissed my eldritch goat girl. “I love you too.”

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