Ultimatum

Last modified on 2010-02-24 11:38:59 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

By Jason Geary

“Ain’t no such thing as a good man out here. Ain’t nothin’ but degrees of bad… Same person that rescues a man from a burnin’ house is just likely to shoot him in the back for his boots. It’s why I ride alone… Don’t trust nobody… Can’t. It’s a mistake I made once before an’ I don’t plan on doin’ it again… Now, don’t go protestin’. Makes ya sound weak. You can’t follow me boy. I won’t have it….  I like you. I do… An’ we did good things here you and me. Things we’ll be remembered for. So you ride that wagon. You find yourself a woman. Settle down. Show her what it’s like to be treated proper… Hey, I said no protestin’!… Good…  You know where I’m goin’ there ain’t no coming back. You follow me; you’re as good as dead…  And that I can’t live with… So walk away… Go… You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about, I ain’t the type to shoot a man in the back.”

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Unheimlich

Last modified on 2010-06-23 23:49:41 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

By Dave Bloustien

It had been eons. Entire star systems had bloomed and withered, alien civilizations had risen and crumbled to dust, all while the Great Old One slept. But now he stirred, awake and ravenous. His tentacled mouth pricked at the fabric of time and space, tearing a rift from his dimension into ours.

Cthulhu fhtagn!

Gingerly at first, then with a yawning hunger, Cthulhu prised the threads of reality apart, and pushed his cephalopoid head through the gap. The air on the far side was temperate, unpleasantly so, and stank of human contentment. The planet’s star had sunk beyond the horizon, and its moon flooded the beaches with a palild gloom that pleased Cthulhu greatly.

Cthulhu fhtagn!

Stretching, the Great Old One blanketed the village with the shadow of his wings, and set his monstrous intelligence adrift.

Every so often, one of the more sensitive human creatures might feel his probing consciousness, and pull her coat a little tighter, hurry a little faster down the cobbled Spanish street. But these transient lives were of no real interest to The Great Old One.

Cthulhu fhtagn!

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Here was the local hub of their activity. An eating-house, of squawking chatter, dull music and rampant consumption. Slaves bearing plates of food, scurried between the tables. On the wall, chalk stone scrawlings marked out a archaic human liturgy.

‘TAPAS’, it read. And beneath: ‘pulpitos a la plancha’.

If those words had any import, their meaning was lost on The Great Old One. No doubt it was some sort of primitive chant, to ward off the inevitable darkness. But it wouldn’t save them. He would consume this dimension, and those who ate and shat and copulated in its reality stream would be but a passing footnote in its memory.

And then, the Great Old One’s mystical eye fell upon the contents of those plates.

The horror. The biting, tearing, terrible appetites of those who ate. And those severed tentacles and boneless bodies, blackened, glazed. Some devoured, some pushed to the side. The, unfathomable horror.

With that, the Great Old One slipped back through the rift, sealed it, and with a cosmic futility, willed himself back to sleep.

Unrequited

Last modified on 2010-05-21 01:03:26 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

By David Myers

She flies through the air,

A spirit both nimble and free,

Dancing and playing,

for all to see,

He watched from the ground,

For she had ensnared his eye,

To her beauty, her grace, her charm,

Oh how he wished he could fly,

To dance with her,

Two hearts entwined,

To leave this early confinement,

Far, far behind,

He sighs wistfully,

as he stared into heaven,

For dreams, such as these,

Surely a man can be forgiven.

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