Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom
Author: Cameron Pierce
Date: 2011-10-04 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Contemporary; Humorous; Vampires; Horror; General; Fiction
Description: Franz and Lola are vampires in love. They live in a cottage near the sea with their little vampire baby. Burn Girl is a lonely girl who walks along the bottom of the sea, constantly on fire. The water doesn't put her fire out or soothe her burns. It only makes her feel like she's wearing an itchy wool sweater. Bruno is the buffest vampire. He is building Muscle Island, a floating fortress comprised of mussels. The Vampire Science Council has been working for centuries to prevent the depletion of their arctic planet's blood supply, but the blood has finally run out. Cyrus Lugosi's friends want
Publisher: Eraserhead Press

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“Wake up, the baby is dead.”

Franz blinked the frost from his eyes. His young wife was crying, leaning over the cradle beside their coffin.

“Come back to bed. You must be dreaming,” he said.

“The baby is dead. The baby is dead.”

Franz climbed out of the coffin. His malnourished, blood-starving muscles creaked like icebergs.

He sidled up beside Lola and peered down into the cradle, where their newborn baby lay.

Franz put a hand on the sunken cheek of Lion Man, anticipating the familiar coldness. He recoiled from the hot flesh of his dead son.

“I told you he’s dead,” Lola said, sobbing into Franz’s shoulder.

He took Lola in his arms and sat down with her on the edge of the coffin. They cried together until blood leaked from their eyes and Franz said, “We must bury him.”

Franz put on his most depressing suit, a black two-piece he had inherited from his father. The buttons on the jacket were spiders that wept tiny tears when you touched them. The cufflinks were the eyeballs of a fish, relics from the epoch when vampires hunted and gathered and felt one with nature.

He combed his black hair out of his eyes and donned his coffin-shaped hat.

“Can you zip me up?” Lola said.

Franz stepped behind her and zipped up the crimson bat suit.

Lola spun around, flapping her velvet bat wings. “How do I look?” she said, wiggling her triangular ears.

“You haven’t worn your bat costume since our wedding,” Franz said.

Lola frowned. “Does it look okay? Is it inappropriate?”

“It’s perfect. You look beautiful. I’ll arrange Lion Man in his stroller if you pack two pints of blood.”

“Take an extra blanket for him,” Lola said.

“I’ll grab a shovel too. We can build an ice castle by the seashore.”

Franz smiled, recalling the family picnics they used to go on.

He lifted his dead boy out of the crib. A cloud of evaporated blood slipped from Lion Man’s puckered mouth, destroying any fantasy of picnics.

He laid his son in the stroller and tucked a gray blanket over him. He touched the buttons of his suit jacket, nodding as the spiders of depression wept into the black designer fabric.

“What do you think killed him?” Lola asked.

Franz looked down at the stroller he was pushing. The stroller had spiked wheels that prevented it from slipping on the ice. “Could’ve choked,” he said.

“I think he saw into the future and realized there’s nothing more to life, so he stopped breathing and danced into the blackness of his own mind.”

“Smart fellow.”

“Our Lion Man was a genius.”

“If only we had the courage to follow his way.”

“To stop breathing once and for all.”

Franz knew they were only saying these things to console themselves. There was no good reason for a child to die. A child’s death was the worst thing of all.

“Let’s bury him by the sea,” Franz said.

“Remember how he would dip a hand into the water? He would pull his hand up so carefully, cupping water in his palm. His fingers frozen, his palm a shallow lake of ice.”

Franz laughed in fond remembrance of his child. “He licked his hand like a popsicle.”

“He taught us that a hand is a popsicle waiting to happen.”

“Smart fellow.”

“Our Lion Man was a genius.”

They continued their stroller march toward the frozen seashore.

It was a beautiful day to bury someone.

Dark clouds broiled like fat devils. Invisible sky beasts screeched and growled, lashing the clouds with lightning tongues. A storm was coming.

The planet had been storm-deprived for seven months. It was an environmental crisis.

Thousands of years ago, a group of scientists promised to invent a machine that could produce blood out of nothing. Even though the scientists were still trying, they were no closer to making the necessary breakthroughs in blood technology. Most vampires believed that technology would solve the crisis. They placed all their hope for the future in science. Most vampires had given up trying to be better vampires.

Franz and Lola were not most vampires. They adhered to the faith of the soothsayer Gaul, last surviving elder of the now-defunct Order of the Old Ones. They knew their species was to blame for the impending global collapse. If the vampires had joined together and treated their planet with kindness and respect, recognizing that it was a fragile, finite body, then the planet would have continued to produce blood for as long as it lived. There would be no scarcity of blood.

Vampires were not immortal, but they sure acted like it. Despite living for many thousands of years, they never matured beyond teenaged brains and bodies. Gaul the soothsayer, bless his ascetic heart, was a mere little boy who wore a fake beard and bathrobes three sizes too big.

The portent of a storm made Franz happy. A storm following a funeral was considered good luck. Also, it meant the vampires would celebrate tonight. Uncertainty over the blood supply had cast a pall of bad feelings over the vampires. Tonight, they would celebrate for the first time in seven months. They would all be friends again.

“Here we are,” Franz said, halting the stroller by the icy sea.

“Should we send him off to sea, or bury him beneath an ice castle?” Lola asked.

“I think Lion Man would want to be at sea, frozen at the bottom like a popsicle.”

“Delicious,” Lola said.

Franz removed Lion Man’s corpse from the stroller and set the blanket-enshrouded body on the back of a snow turtle sculpted hastily, to judge from the slushy drooling of its eyes.

“Hand me the shovel,” Franz said.

Lola handed him the shovel.

“Do you want to say any last words before . . .”

“I love you, Lion Man. I will always love you. You were the best little vampire any mother could ask for. I don’t blame you for leaving this life. Without your father, I would have chosen the same for myself years ago. Sleep well, dream forever.”

Franz leveled the sharp point of the shovel’s spade over the birdlike neck of his dead son. He drove the shovel down hard, wincing at the crunch of frozen bones breaking.

He threw the shovel aside and wrapped Lion Man’s fist-sized head in the gray blanket while Lola kissed the neck stump of the headless baby. Her sadness was sincere, but Franz could tell by her prolonged kisses that she was also savoring their son’s blood, not even waiting for him to pitch the baby head into the sea.

On the day of their first child’s death, Lola was the same impatient girl that she had been the day Franz met her. After they exchanged anonymous messages on Ice Chat for two months, they agreed to meet up, but Lola abandoned him on their first date after Franz excused himself to use the restroom. He thought she ran out because she disliked him in person, so he was surprised to receive a message from her on Ice Chat later that night. She apologized for ditching him and explained that she gets unbearably nervous when she’s alone in public spaces. Franz forgave her. After their second date, they were inseparable.

He stood on the edge of the shore and threw the blanket holding Lion Man’s head into the sea. The blanket came unwrapped and the head plunged into the water only a few feet out, too close to shore to seem like a noble burial but too far out to draw it back.

Franz wiped a tear from his eye. He turned away from the sea.

He walked past Lola, who was feeding shamelessly.

He took the pint bottles from the stroller’s storage compartment and removed the bottle caps with the fanged opener of his skull-shaped belt buckle. He crept up behind Lola and pressed the cold body of a blood bottle against her neck.

She craned her head around and stepped away from Lion Man’s body. Guiltily, she wiped the blood from her mouth.

Accepting a bottle from Franz, she leaned back against the snow turtle and took a swig of blood.

“You couldn’t wait,” Franz said, raising his own bottle to his lips.

“I had a taste is all,” she said defensively. “You drink faster than me. If I waited for you, you’d drain him so fast I’d be lucky to choke down a thimbleful.”

Franz propped an elbow on the snow turtle.

Lola finished the rest of her bottle in two long swigs. She took his bottle and finished it off as well, challenging him to protest.

Franz turned to face the sea. He could not fault her for her stinginess with blood. She grew up in a full house with eight vampire siblings. Blood was as scarce as the infrequent—and always begrudging—affection doled out by her overworked father and unstable mother.

Lola hooked her chin over his shoulder. Rejuvenated from the blood, her face radiated a healthy, pearl white paleness. She flapped her bat wings and squeaked cute bat noises.

Franz smiled. Lola’s happiness was infectious.

She wrapped her bat wings around him as the first red drops sprinkled down from the black sky and stained the ice, awakening the silent planet from its seven month slumber.

Sarah’s Ice Chatter vibrated on her nightstand. She slid her right hand out from under the blankets of her coffin and groped around the nightstand without opening her eyes. She was exhausted, but the prospect of a sexy message from her new boyfriend churned her guts to butterflies. She blinked the crust of sleep out of her eyes and held the Ice Chatter close to her face.

I luv u.

Ditto, she responded.

She sighed. She’d hoped it was a sexy text message from her new boy toy, Bruno. No such luck. It was only Fang Foot, her husband. Fang Foot was the leader of the Council. He was overweight and crippled, but also rich and powerful. Everyone suspected that Sarah married Fang Foot for his money, and they were right. She loathed the fat slug. She hated that his absence of a last name required her to take his second name, Foot, for her own. Sarah Foot. How dreadful.

That was not to say she loved Bruno, for she did not love him any more than she loved Fang Foot. She would never leave Fang Foot either. He was the richest vampire of all. But Bruno was hip and fun. He knew how to show a girl a good time.

She returned her phone to the nightstand and pulled the blankets up to her chin. She was babysitting the Lugosi kids tonight. She hoped Bruno was still up for a rendezvous after she put the little vamps to bed.

Babysitting was the perfect gig for hooking up with Bruno. Fang Foot would never suspect that she was messing around, not in a million years.

She could not wait to be swept up in Bruno’s muscular embrace. He was so strong and handsome.

Anticipating his touch, she giggled to herself as she drifted off.

Vampires can be so dumb.

Cthulhu sat at the counter of a lonely diner, waiting for the hamburger he had ordered. He drank a pint of weak blood beer. They carried nothing else on draught. A few elder gods sat in groups, pairs, or by themselves at booths and tables. Nobody else sat at the counter. Cthulhu could feel their eyes on his cape and tentacles, not to mention the bulging gut beneath his spandex uniform. He knew their whispers were directed at him.

The waitress emerged from the kitchen and told everyone to get out. She looked at Cthulhu and said, “Except you.”

When the elder gods cleared out, the waitress said, “You’re supposed to be dreaming.”

Cthulhu shrugged. “I got hungry.”

“Nyarlathotep was in this morning. He said the ice age is ending. The vampires will try summoning you tonight.”

“Maybe they will.”

“You’ve slept for a long time. Are you up for destroying the planet?”

“I have dreamed of this hamburger for eons.”

The waitress disappeared into the kitchen.

Cthulhu waited for his hamburger.

The storm had kicked into high gear by the time they hung Lion Man’s headless body in the cellar outside.

They locked the cellar door and moved up the front walkway, abandoning the stroller in the frosty yard. They would not need it anymore.

“There’s bound to be a celebration tonight,” Franz said.

“We’re already wearing our finest clothes. Do you want to head to the Bat Cave now?”

Franz shrugged. “After Lion Man’s death, I think we’re due for a little unwinding. Besides, the bloodless season endured for seven months. Who knows how long the next one will last? We might not get a chance to party with everyone for another year.”

“I should call my parents and break the news about Lion Man,” Lola said.

“Can’t you wait? The news would spoil the celebration for them.”

“I’d rather get it over with.”

Lola dialed her parents on the wall-mounted telephone. After they moved in together, Franz and Lola got rid of their Ice Chatters and installed an archaic telephone they’d found in an antique store.

“Hi, is Mom or Dad home?

“Quit fucking around, Cyrus.

“So they’re not home? Did they leave for the celebration?

“Right, you don’t know.

“I stand corrected. You don’t care.

“Fine. Bye.”

Lola hung up the phone.

“My brother is such a little asshole,” she said.

Cyrus was Lola’s younger brother. Excepting the twin toddlers, he was the youngest member of the Lugosi family.

“Give me a few minutes to paint my fangs.” She kissed Franz on the nose. “If we see my parents tonight, don’t say anything. I can’t handle telling them face-to-face.”

She went into the bedroom to paint her fangs.

Franz sat down on the couch and picked up the book on the end table. The book, borrowed from Gaul, was an archaic tome of maritime adventures, written in the age when the planet was a sea of blood and vampires ruled the waves.

Franz felt nostalgic for this time, even though he was born long after the sea wolves (as the vampires of ocean faring days were known).

The planet’s waterways had frozen over a long time ago. Nobody had ventured out to sea for countless years. Contemporary vampires were too domesticated for true adventure.

Franz set the book down, feeling unfocused. He stared up at the painting on the far wall. The painting, his father’s masterwork, portrayed the planet drowned in red, interrupted only by the smallest island.

Vampires knelt side by side on the island’s shore, raising cupped palms full of ocean blood to their lips. In the background, splintered wood and tattered sails rose in a heap. When the last ship crashed on the first island, the sea wolves died and the selfish, weak, and cruel vampires of the modern age were born.

His father was a skilled painter, perhaps the greatest the vampires had ever known. Franz’s father died shortly after he completed this painting. He drowned trying to save Franz’s mother, who also drowned. This was the fate of most men in Franz’s family. They drowned in failed attempts to save their drowning loved ones.

Beyond the last of the sea wolves and the demise of a perennial dream, the painting depicted a sea redder than any blood found in the modern world. The sea was not made of blood anymore. The sea had been raped by vampires. No more did the planet offer up blood like a giant teat. For the past few thousand years, vampires were forced to mine deep in the earth for blood. Some were beginning to question just how deep the blood ran.

“Do you like my fangs?” Lola said, flashing teeth painted green.

Franz nodded, hardly acknowledging her. “Should we bring Lion Man as a party snack or save him for a late dinner tonight?”

“You didn’t look at my teeth,” Lola pouted.

“They’re beautiful, sweetheart.”

“Let’s save Lion Man for later. No reason to share our precious baby with a bunch of jerks, but we can put aside a leg for Gaul if you’d like.”

“Should we lay out buckets to collect blood?”

“Let’s just buy it at the market. Blood never tastes right when we bottle it ourselves.”

Franz loved hand-bottled blood. Lola preferred store-bought. So they left the house, shrouded beneath the umbrella of Lola’s bat wings to protect them from a storm they did not find.

The storm ended before it began. Franz squeezed Lola’s hand and prayed to the elder gods that the celebration would not be canceled.

They shuffled down the frozen sidewalk to the Bat Cave, which was not a cave at all. Rather, the Bat Cave was a megalithic glacial dome marking the center of the village. Whenever an important decision was made, it was made inside the Bat Cave. Whenever vampires got married, they got married in the Bat Cave. All celebrations, it stood to reason, were celebrated in the Bat Cave.

A crowd of vampires in their finest party attire huddled together outside the Bat Cave’s crystalline doors. They stopped whispering when Franz and Lola approached.

“Cheers to the storm, mates,” Franz said.

The vampires shifted their nervous eyes to Bruno, the sparkling, muscular leader of their clan. Bruno rolled his head around the rim of his popped collar. “Party’s canceled,” he said. “The Council has ordered a meeting. We’re voting on the blood crisis. They want us mobilized by morning.”

Franz turned to Lola and said, “We have to find Gaul.”

They hurried into the Bat Cave while Bruno and his cronies laughed behind them.

Bursting through the doors, they nearly trampled Fang Foot, the wheelchair-bound curmudgeon of the Council.

“Bah!” Fang Foot croaked, and shook a foot at them. Fang Foot was not truly crippled. His feet were too large for his body. So large that he could not walk on them.

“We’re terribly sorry,” Lola said. “Can you help us find Gaul?”

“Find him yourself!”

Franz leaned in close to Fang Foot’s face. “Why did the Council move the vote up? We weren’t supposed to vote for another three winters. You lied to us.”

Franz let out a gasp as Fang Foot’s clawed, hairy toes crushed his windpipe.

Fang Foot curled his big foot inward, drawing Franz close. Choking and immobilized, Franz was helpless as Fang Foot’s curdled, rotten breath washed over him.

Fang Foot whispered, “Look around, boy. Don’t you see we’re out of time? You put your heart in the right place, but today will be the last day of our lives if we don’t act now. Wait until the meeting. You’ll hear everything I just heard.”

Fang Foot released Franz and glided away in his wheelchair. Franz rubbed his sore throat.

“What did he say?” Lola asked.

“Let’s sit down.”

“Shouldn’t we find Gaul? Are you okay?”

It hurt to breathe, never mind speak.

They sat down in two velvet thrones near the front of the room as vampires filed into the dome, filling the empty thrones with cold bodies. Their worried whispers flit through the Bat Cave like the dismembered ghost of a snow turtle.

There was a girl who was always on fire. Nobody put a curse on her or anything. She was just born that way.

The elder gods called her Burn Girl.

Burn Girl spent her days walking around under the sea because the cold water soothed the burning. The cold water made the fire feel like an itchy wool sweater. Burn Girl liked itchy wool sweaters, but she had never owned one because there was not very much wool under the sea.

Now Burn Girl walked to her favorite diner. Burn Girl’s favorite diner was a lonely diner. The diner was open twenty-four hours. This was one reason she liked it. She also liked it because unlike most lonely diners, this lonely diner was never empty. At least one elder god or shambling thing could always be found there, drinking coffee or eating pancakes or reading the newspaper.

Nobody talked to Burn Girl on her long walks across the bottom of the sea, but in the lonely diner she never failed to meet someone who was open to a little friendly conversation.

Burn Girl sat next to an old fat squid in a green and yellow spandex costume. She noticed the untouched hamburger in front of him. The hamburger looked as if it had sat there for a while. A war hammer lay on the linoleum floor beneath the stool creaking under the squid’s weight.

“You dropped your hammer,” Burn Girl said.

She bent over and picked it up. The lightness of the hammer surprised her. She realized the hammer was made of foam.

She placed the hammer beside the hamburger in front of the squid.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“I am Cthulhu,” said the squid.

“I’ve heard of you. My name is Burn Girl.”

“What did you hear about me?”

“I heard bad things happen when you’re around, that everything turns to chaos.”

“I am glad they have not forgotten.” He picked up the hamburger in a tentacled hand and shoved the whole burger into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before spitting it out. He sifted through the mush and plucked out two pickles.

“I hate pickles,” he said.

“Dude, your family is fucked up.”

Isaac shut the door behind him and tossed a duffel bag on the floor. Cyrus sat on the edge of his coffin, strumming an unplugged warlock guitar.

He set the guitar inside the coffin and approached the duffel bag. He touched the bag, then looked up at Isaac. “Is the door locked?”

Isaac reached behind him and locked the door. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna notice us. Your mom is fucking hysterical down there.”

“My sister just called and wanted to talk to her, but fuck that. I’m not going down there and dealing with that shit.”

“At least you can do anything you want.”

Cyrus would have preferred having normal parents than living in a house with no rules or guidance, although he’d never admit this to his friends.

“They’re so fucked,” he said. “They belong in a mental asylum. So is everything in here?”

Isaac brushed his choppy aubergine hair out of his face and nodded, “Everything but the dynamite.”

“Shit, I was looking forward to that.” Cyrus unzipped the duffel bag.

Isaac leaned over Cyrus, pointing. “Check out the size of these knives.”

Cyrus carefully removed a towel from the duffel bag. He placed the towel on the floor. Wrapped inside were three knives with blades larger than his forearm. He made an admiring whoa and looked up at Isaac. “Are these machetes, bro?”

Isaac nodded proudly. “Check out what else I got.”

Cyrus fished around in the bag, removing brass knuckles, scalpels, butterfly knives, cans of red and black spray paint, and a six-shooter.

Cyrus admired the haul. “Where’d you find this stuff?”

“You can find anything in Ice Chat’s classifieds. Tons of crazy old vampires sell this shit. They’re so old and crazy, they sell it for like way cheap. Some of them are a bit sketchy but, you know, whatever. The dynamite should’ve been here today. Oh well. With everything we’ve got planned, I don’t even see how there’d be time for it. Besides, I think it’ll be pretty hilarious when I’m gone and then some dynamite arrives in the mail. My parents will probably still be mourning and shit and then some dynamite will show up at their door. Man, I hope they do something drastic, like blow themselves up. I know they’ll be genuinely sad, so I wouldn’t put it past them. What about you? Will your parents be sad?”

“I hope Cthulhu destroys the planet but doesn’t kill my parents. I hope he saves them in a jar and makes them miserable forever.” Cyrus picked up the six-shooter. He held it awkwardly and at a distance, obviously afraid of the gun. He had a very serious expression on his face. “Is this loaded?”

“Three bullets. One for each of us. Better make it count. When’s Kayla supposed to get here?”

“She called not that long ago and said she had to pick up her sister from succubus practice, then she’s swinging by the costume shop for the rest of our supplies. Said she’d come straight here after the costume shop.”

“Kayla always has to pick up her sister from succubus practice.”

“She won’t have to anymore.”

There was a lot of shouting downstairs and they glanced nervously at the door.

“Let’s put this shit away,” Isaac said.

Cyrus nodded.

They returned the weapons to the duffel bag.

“This is it,” Isaac said, zipping the duffel bag.

“Think we can pull it off?”

“Kayla said we can do anything as long as we listen to her. She hasn’t been wrong yet. I’ve got faith in her. She knows what she’s doing.”

“None of us has gone this far before.”

“But we’ve been building up to it. We’re ready to summon Cthulhu. Tonight is our night. We’re the lucky ones who get to destroy the world.”

Cyrus returned to the edge of his coffin. He picked up his guitar and noodled apathetically. Until recently, he’d thought he was on the level with Kayla and Isaac. He, not them, had been the one to suggest messing around with the Necronomicon (well, the available version of it) in the first place. That was less than two months ago. Kayla asserted command when she talked them into summoning a ghoul to rob a blood blank for them. After the blood bank heist, Cyrus took a back seat in the group. Kayla’s desire for power and control was one of the first things that attracted him to her. Now, he couldn’t stand her, but he felt too afraid to leave. By the time she laid out the plans that asked for his life, she held Cyrus on a one inch leash. He worried what she might do if he failed to comply with her latest plan. He was totally into summoning Cthulhu, but he worried that maybe they were taking things too far. Even if they failed to wake Cthulhu from his eternal dreams, they were all going to die tonight.

Suicide pacts were a bitch. Cyrus wished he could back out. At this point, they would kill him anyway. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind so much if he didn’t have to be the sacrificial lamb. Kayla argued that of course he would be the one to die first because he was her true love. He wondered about that, though. She had been way more attentive to Isaac of late.

The doorbell screamed downstairs.

“Think that’s Kayla?” Isaac asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Go check.”

Cyrus sighed and set his guitar against his coffin. He got up and unlocked the door, shutting it behind him as he stepped out of his room. He walked down the hall and stopped at the railing at the end. He stared down into the main entryway. It was empty.

The doorbell rang again. His mom was screaming in the kitchen. His little brother and sister were crying somewhere else downstairs. “It’s open,” he shouted, even though he did not know for sure whether the front door was unlocked. He descended the stairs and opened the front door, expecting to greet Kayla. She never entered a home without being welcomed in. Like a true vampire, she claimed.

It wasn’t Kayla. It was Fang Foot’s wife. The gold digger with hot fangs. Sarah.

She smiled like she was just so goddamn happy to see him. “Hi Cyrus,” she said. “How are you?”

“My mom’s in the kitchen.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, a puzzled expression on her face. She was waiting for Cyrus to move aside so she could enter the house.

Cyrus realized that he had totally spaced out, fixated on Sarah’s fangs. He lowered his head, embarrassed, and ran upstairs.

“Life is horseshit,” he said as he reentered his room.

Isaac was lying in the coffin.

Bathory’s Blood on Ice spun on the record player Cyrus had received from his older sister, Lola, for his most recent birthday.

“No Kayla?” Isaac asked.

“Just the babysitter.”

“Oh.”

Cyrus climbed into the coffin. He was lying next to Isaac. Their fingers touched.

Silence settled between them as they both realized this was the last time they would ever hang out, listen to music, and get into the sort of trouble only great friends knew how to dig up together.

A few minutes later, Kayla called Isaac via Ice Chatter and said to meet her outside.

As they left the room, Cyrus had to force himself not to cry or get sentimental. This was the last time he would see his record collection, his movies, his books, and most importantly, his guitar.

“You were getting pretty good,” Isaac said, gesturing toward the guitar. “We could have started a band.”

Cyrus left the Bathory record spinning.

As they drove away from his house, he felt relieved that he was sitting in the back seat of Kayla’s car. Out of direct vision of his friends, he stared out the window and hid his face, tears welling in his eyes.

“Where’s the Necronomicon?” Isaac asked.

“In the back with the costumes. You got the weapons?”

Isaac bobbed his head up and down. “I can’t fucking wait. I’m so pumped.”

“Cthulhu rises,” Kayla said. She took one hand off the steering wheel and laid it in Isaac’s lap. “Tonight, baby, Cthulhu rises.”

Isaac and Kayla leaned in over the middle console and kissed. Pulling away, they chanted together: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die.”

After the curious burning girl left the diner, Cthulhu rang the bell on the counter.

The waitress came out from the kitchen, eating a tuna melt. “You need another blood beer?” she asked between bites.

“There were pickles on my burger,” Cthulhu said.

“Pickles come on all hamburgers,” the waitress said, her mouth full of cheese and tuna.

“I asked for no pickles.”

“The chef takes pride in his pickles. He doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“Perhaps I could teach him a lesson about the meaning of no.” Cthulhu slammed a tentacled hand against the counter on the word ‘no’ for added effect.

The waitress set down her tuna melt. She looked nervous. “We don’t want any trouble here. The burger’s on the house. You want another beer? Drinks are on me tonight.”

“Do you like calamari?”

“What?” the waitress asked, her brow furrowing.

“Answer the question.”

She shook her head, her eyes darkening with worry.

“No, I never really cared for it,” she said.

“I take great pride in my calamari. I insist that you try it.”

Cthulhu whipped a tentacle across the counter. The waitress reached behind her and grabbed hold of something. She stabbed at Cthulhu, but the object in her hand was a tuna melt, not a knife.

Cthulhu forced a tentacle into her mouth, down her throat.

“I’ll ask once more,” he said. “Do you enjoy calamari?”

The waitress gurgled. She would choke to death in another minute.

Cthulhu let his tentacle constrict around her heart, cutting off the circulation of blood pumping through her body.

“How you feel right now, that is how I feel when I eat pickles,” he said. “Pickles make me mad. Pickles make me sad. Things die when I feel mad or sad.”

He withdrew the tentacle from her esophagus and let her experience a small moment of relief before ripping her head off.

Gaul was one of the last vampires to enter the Bat Cave. Franz waved to him. The soothsayer shuffled up the aisle, walking with a cane he did not truly need, and sat in the throne they’d saved for him.

“Gaul, they want to hold the vote today. We’ve got to stop them,” Franz said.

Gaul shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid we must concede. We’ll give our speeches and make our case as planned, but I’ve spoken with the scientists. The Council is right. The vote must be held now. In fact, it may already be too late.”

“But Gaul, I’m not ready to make a speech. I have nothing prepared.”

“You’ll do fine. Stay calm. Remember the key points. Leave the legwork to me.”

“Stay calm. Remember the key points,” Franz repeated.

“In school, you were elected president of the Young Vampire’s Environmentalist Club on the basis of your campaign speeches alone. You’ll be wonderful,” Lola assured.

“That was six-hundred years ago. I haven’t spoken in front of a crowd since.”

“Listen to Lola,” Gaul said. “Find the calm center within yourself, and if you start to panic, look to us for guidance.”

Franz took a deep breath.

“You’ll be wonderful,” Lola said.

The seven members of the Vampire Council rose to the stage and occupied the six thrones of judgment. There were only six thrones of judgment because Fang Foot did not need a throne; Fang Foot had his wheelchair.

The seven Council members raised their seven wooden stakes in the air, signifying the start of the meeting.

Excepting Fang Foot, the Council members looked identical. They wore curly white wigs, red lipstick, rings of black eye shadow, and pale green face powder. Until Bruno started the muscle craze, the Council members were the sole trendsetters of cool. Most vampires still acted and dressed exactly like the Council, although buff vampires were an increasingly common sight in the village. There were rumors of a floating gym that Bruno had begun to build upon the sea. He intended to call it Muscle Island. He wanted to smother the ocean and split the vampire community in two. This was all according to rumor, of course.

Fang Foot cleared his throat. “Can the two sides please rise and approach the bench?”

Franz and Lola helped Gaul out of his throne. They marched, one halting step at a time, to the front of the cavernous hall. Franz could feel the disdainful eyes burning into his back. He tried to remember the key points for his speech, but his brain had turned to mush. He trembled as they turned and faced the hateful eyes.

The clan of scientists flew to the front of the room with their blood-fueled jetpacks. The crowd applauded.

Progress was impressive. Progress was fun. Saving the planet was not impressive. Saving the planet was not fun. Franz had known this for a long time. Now was his last chance to prove to the vampires that progress would kill them in the end. He remembered that his purpose for being onstage was to support a cause far greater than himself. This gave him a boost of confidence, until a vampire shouted, “Go home, ice huggers!”

The crowd burst out in laughter.

Fang Foot hammered silence down on the Bat Cave with his evilest gaze. He cleared his throat and began, “We are gathered here today to decide the fate of our community. Whereas a short time ago we sat on the edge of a storm, anticipating the end of a dry spell that plagued us for seven months, we are not celebrating now. We are not celebrating because the storm did not come to fruition. Our scientists are here to tell us what that means. Their report may startle you. You may feel scared, anxious, and uncertain. Give them your fullest attention, because they are also here to tell us what to do. After we hear from the scientists and counterpoints from the environmentalists, we shall vote on how the community is to mobilize in the wake of this dire, yet totally unforeseen, crisis.”

Fang Foot bowed his head and the audience clapped as one of the vampire scientists took to the center of the stage. A second vampire scientist shuffled up beside the first, toting a stack of large graph charts.

The first vampire grabbed the first chart and held it up for the crowd to see.

The crowd gasped.

The vampire scientist discarded the graph, then held up another:

The vampires shrank and shuddered into their thrones, stunned by this terrifying (and factual) revelation of their demise. The vampire scientist displayed a third graph.

A fourth:

A fifth:

The sixth clinched it:

The vampire scientists returned to their companions on the side of the stage. Fang Foot wheeled forward, nodding complacently. “Now will the Environmental Committee issue their response?”

Gaul winked at Franz, who gave Lola’s hand one final squeeze.

Franz shuffled to the front of the stage. He stared out at the sea of faces, all adverse to him before he had even spoken a word. They were not here to listen or learn. They wanted to be told what to think and feel. The Council and the scientists were more adept at the brainwash game. His speeches had earned him high marks as a child, but Franz never adapted to the smooth-talking, promise-making sleight of hand of adults. As a child, his clumsiness was mistaken for charisma, and anyway he was always honest, whereas most vampires outgrew honesty. They forgot. Those who did not forget simply ceased to care.

Oh, what a nightmare! If only he had a lifetime to prepare.

“The scientists are correct,” he announced. “The planet is dying. The planet has always been dying, ever since the last sea wolves came ashore. In the course of our slow decline, the seas have turned from blood to water. The core of our personalities has corroded. The blood pulsing through our veins has gone weak. Our spirits, empty. We as a collective have no thought for the planet, no thought for anyone but ourselves. The scientists are right. We’re out of hope.”

“Crawl back to the sea, ice hugger!”

Once more, the Bat Cave erupted in laughter.

Fang Foot glided forward. “Step back. That’s enough now,” he told Franz.

Tears welled in Franz’s eyes as he backed away, unable to withdraw himself from the malicious crowd.

Gaul put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You did fine. We put up the best fight we could. You and Lola go on. I’ll take it from here.”

Gaul engaged in a heated conversation with Fang Foot while Lola ushered Franz offstage. They ducked out through a side entrance.

“I was horrible. I ruined everything,” Franz said. He threw his coffin hat to the ground and stomped on it.

“Calm down. You did fine.”

“How can you say I did fine? Gaul didn’t even want me to stick around.”

“He wants us to meet him at his cottage. He told me to leave with you now, to give the impression that we were leaving because you were humiliated. He said he has something important to show us, something far more important than any vote.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No. I mentioned to him that Lion Man died. That’s when he told me. Then your speech started.”

Franz scooped up his coffin hat and tried to smooth out the crumples, but the hat was ruined.

“You can always buy a new one,” Lola said.

“Not if the world is ending tomorrow.”

Bad news. Council called a meeting.

The text from Bruno appeared in Sarah’s inbox a few minutes after she finished tying up the Lugosi kids and their crazy-ass mother. After what she witnessed, tying up the family had been her only choice. Now she sat on the couch, trembling. Cum over now, she texted. So freaked out.

A few seconds later, her Ice Chatter vibrated in her lap. A response from Bruno. We voted to move underground tonight. You okay?

I need u. Please.

Fang Fuck ordered me to help evacuate the town. Sorry.

Sarah cursed her stupid husband. He ruined all of her fun. She responded to Bruno. Please, I’m begging you. Please sneak away. I’m in trouble.

I’ll try. Get out of there if you can.

Sarah threw her Ice Chatter away from her and started up a new round of convulsive sobs. She felt unloved and confused. She thought back on the scene she had stumbled upon when she came into the house. She had discovered the frail, sickly Ella Lugosi in the kitchen, lying naked on the floor.

The eggs had still been hot when she shoved them in her pussy, telling from her blistered labia. The gray-haired vampire lay spread-eagle on the granite floor. Crushed hardboiled eggs—whites, yolk, and shell all mixed up—spilled out of her vagina. The children nuzzled at their mother’s pussy, eating egg out of her while blood and menstrual mucus rolled down her thighs, painting their little lips. The crunch of eggshells in their mouths drowned all other noise, like the deafening patter of a thousand tooth-encrusted tongues banging on glass drums.

Vampire children eating eggs out of a cunt.

Cunt eggs.

Egg-eating children.

Child vampires.

Vampire cunts.

She curled into a ball on the couch and cried, unable to decide if she should untie Ella and the children and evacuate with them to the underground, or else wait for Bruno or Fang Foot to come rescue her. She felt scared and helpless and totally, utterly alone.

Gaul lived alone in a ramshackle cottage on top of a steep and icy mountain. In order to avoid the perilous climb, Franz and Lola usually invited Gaul over to their place when he asked to have them over. There was no avoiding the climb now. Franz walked in front of Lola. She held onto his waist. The path was too narrow for two people to walk side by side. Some days, the wind blew so strong against Gaul’s mountain that nobody could climb up or down the mountain without being blown away.

When they reached the summit where Gaul’s cottage leaned on teetering stilts, Franz and Lola stared out at the frozen, silent earth.

“Remember how dark the town used to be?” Franz said.

“The town is still dark.”

“Sure it is, but the scientists are right. The darkness is dying out.”

“We’ve known the darkness was dying all along. Tomorrow, though, that’s quite soon. Gaul said this sort of thing takes eons.” Lola paused. “You don’t really believe the darkness will die out by tomorrow, do you?”

Franz shrugged. “I see no reason why not.”

“You’re so gullible, Franz. Did it occur to you that maybe the Council is pulling one over on the town? They’ve supported the scientists’ proposal to move underground from the beginning. Every attempt we’ve made to gain support has been squashed at the source. It’s just like the Council to expedite the voting process without notice. This battle was supposed to be resolved three winters from now. We need more time.”

“We don’t have more time. It’s over, Lola. We lost. We’ll wait around to see what Gaul has to show us, then we’re heading home to pack our bags. We’re moving underground with the rest.”

“Those graph charts really scared you.”

“Yes, Lola. Those graph charts scared the sea wolf out of me.”

“I knew it,” she said disgustedly. “Whatever, let’s go inside.”

They climbed the rope ladder up to Gaul’s porch. A wooden plaque nailed to the front door proclaimed: WELCOME ENEMIES, STRANGERS, AND FRIENDS. THE KETTLE ON THE STOVE IS FULL OF WATER, THERE IS BLOOD TEA IN THE CUPBOARD, AND A LIBRARY FULL OF BOOKS ON THE SECOND FLOOR. MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME AND STAY A WHILE. YOUR COMRADE, GAUL.

Gaul’s hospitality might have seemed uncanny, until one remembered who he was and where he lived. Few vampires would be willing to climb a mountain to visit their own families, let alone to read cryptic mystical texts and drink weak blood tea with a hermit who headed the Environmental Committee. Franz and Lola, however, were not average vampires. Merrily, they made a pot of blood tea and went upstairs to the library to read while they waited for Gaul.

Cthulhu murdered the cook next.

Afterward, he tied an apron over his spandex uniform and put on a tall white baking hat. If this diner was incapable of cooking the perfect hamburger, he was going to take charge and cook the damned thing himself.

He ran into problems immediately.

The hamburger buns were stale, the lettuce was wilting, the ketchup contained high fructose corn syrup, and white pustules of fat flecked the ground beef. Even if he cooked up a pickle-free burger, his meal would still turn out unsavory.

Cthulhu sighed. He tossed the baking hat aside and stomped out of the kitchen.

Gone were the days when greasy spoons served up top quality food. Nowadays, not even a god could conjure a decent meal without going through a great deal of trouble first.

Cthulhu swore to himself that if the vampires did in fact summon him, he would do everything in his power to find the perfect hamburger. He’d destroy the planet if he had to.

Now, however, was the time for rest. He whipped out his Ice Chatter from the pouch sewn into the right breast of his spandex suit. While the Ice Chatter powered up, he filled another pint glass with blood beer and then sat down at the counter.

His tentacles fumbled over the keypad. He had not tuned in to Lolcats in eons. When conscious, he checked the site for updates hourly, if not more, but he had been dreaming for so long. He could not deny himself the pleasure of those adorable kittens and their so-funny captions. I can has cheezburger remained his favorite, though. It’s what got him started on this whole hamburger kick in the first place.

The Lolcats homepage loaded and Cthulhu began to feel at peace with the universe. He slurped the top layer of foam off the blood beer, wondering what new Lolcats were in store for him.

Franz and Lola were debating the literary merit of Baron Bloodworth’s famous poem, “The Solitary Reaper,” when Gaul materialized in a cloud of smoke on the writing desk in the far corner.

He hopped down from the desk and shook the dust out of his robes. “One in three times, I can teleport with perfect precision. The other two, I stray a few degrees off course and wind up on the writing desk, in the sink, the waste bucket, or someplace worse.”

“Where does the dust come from?” Lola asked.

“The dust? What dust are you speaking of?” Gaul smiled proudly. “This is the skin of Father Time.” He pronounced skin like skein. He laughed at his own bad joke.

Franz closed the volume of Baron Bloodworth’s poetry and asked, “How’d the rest of the meeting go?”

Gaul’s smile melted into a quivering frown. “They booed me offstage. The vote passed to move underground. They want the town evacuated by morning.”

Lola slammed her fist on the table. “We have to stop them!”

“I’m afraid it’s already too late,” Gaul said, looking like a somber owl.

“Then why are we here? Why did you ask Lola to sneak us out of there like that?”

“One hope still remains to stave off the cruel spring that will devastate the planet by morning. I prayed to the great old ones for many centuries, begging that no vampire should ever be required to summon our only hope, for summoning the almighty Cthulhu requires the sacrifice of one’s virginal firstborn child . . . in addition to a readily available copy of the real Necronomicon. Alas, my prayers went unanswered, and yet the old ones have satisfied my demands in their bewildering way. Lola, when you told me that Lion Man had died without apparent cause, everything became clear to me. I’d always known Lion Man would be of great significance to our planet. Little did I know that he would fulfill his life mission by dying so young. You see, I could never ask anyone to sacrifice their virginal firstborn, but Lion Man made it easy. I don’t have to ask you to sacrifice him anymore because he’s already dead. You saved his body, right?”

Lola nodded in the affirmative.

“Uh, except for his head,” Franz said. “Is that a problem?”

“I’m having trouble recalling what the Necronomicon says about the headlessness of virginal firstborns. Let’s go ahead and chance it.”

“But the Necronomicon has been lost for ages. Ever since the sea wolf battleship S.S. Dunsany sank in the first year of recorded time, Cthulhu has been unreachable,” Lola said.

“Yeah, how are we going to summon him if we don’t have the Necronomicon?” Franz asked.

Gaul withdrew a pipe from the breast pocket of his robe and filled the bowl with dried brain matter. “That, my students, is where you’re wrong. Cthulhu is more than a dead myth from a time forgotten. Soon, the lost hero of our planet will be a reality once more. A new age of eco-consciousness shall rise!”

“But how?” Franz and Lola said at once.

“The Necronomicon is in my possession,” Gaul said, his lips contorting around the pipe stem.

“Impossible,” Lola said. “I don’t believe it.”

Franz gasped. “The Necronomicon is in your possession? Does anyone else know?”

“Yes and yes,” Gaul said. “I never told you because I wanted to protect you. I hoped it would never come to this.”

“Where is it? Is it in this room?” Franz stood and began scanning the volumes lining the bookshelves.

“Who?” Lola demanded. “Who did you tell, you fool!”

“Please calm down. We have very little time left. Fang Foot will send the rest of the Council for me soon. He’s the one who knows.

“Before he rose to power in the Council, long before either of you were born, Fang Foot showed great promise as a sorcerer. The Order of the Old Ones viewed him as a bright hope for the future. He was advanced far beyond the other fledglings. The order believed Fang Foot could lead our clan into a new dark age. They dreamed of the seas turning to blood once more. They anticipated an Age of Enlightenment. Sadly, none of this ever came to pass.

“A vampire baby was left at the door of the monastery. Without any means of tracing the parents, the Old Ones took in the orphan and raised him as their own. They even named the little one. Gaul, they decided, after a serious night of heavy drinking. That is how I came to bear my name, but forget that I’m speaking of myself for the moment.

“Gaul possessed one advantage that gave him an edge over the others. He was raised by the Old Ones almost from birth. Most fledglings did not enter the monastery until several decades or even several hundred years into life.

“Soon, the Old Ones shifted the brunt of their energy to training Gaul, who demonstrated an uncanny ability to master everything they taught him. They never imagined a vampire so young could learn the dark arts. They began to adopt other newborns, but never with the same results.

“Fang Foot brooded. He was furious with the Old Ones, and very jealous of Gaul. Finally, on the day Gaul reached the age that enabled him to compete in sorcery duels, Fang Foot challenged him. As per the rules of the Order, it was up to the one challenged to choose the subject of their battle. To everyone’s surprise, young Gaul chose necromancy, even though this was an area where he was uncharacteristically weak and Fang Foot was at his strongest.

“But Gaul soundly defeated Fang Foot. Even though he was less talented than his opponent, Gaul revealed a trait that proved far superior to talent or experience. With patience, wit, and a balanced, quiet mind, Gaul deflected his weaknesses onto his stronger opponent. See, Gaul never learned how to control the undead, but he realized he wouldn’t have to if he could free their buried ghosts instead. So for every undead vampire that Fang Foot raised up from the grave, Gaul reached through time and exhumed a hundred skeletons from the forgotten closets of the undead. Soon, the sorcerer’s battlefield went up in frenzy.

“Fang Foot lost control of his undead army because they were all too busy chasing after the skeletons of their past, trying to conceal them from the living spectators. Gaul’s ghosts, on the other hand, were as light as balloons. He held their invisible strings and laughed as the undead tripped and stumbled after them. It was a glorious day for him, but not for Fang Foot. He resigned from the Order of the Old Ones that night, vowing to have his revenge someday. He threw himself into politics. Thousands of years later, he finally rose to head of the Council, and sure enough, on his first day in office, he used his new power to shut down the Order of the Old Ones. It was a sad day for Gaul, who had since become an elder in the Order himself. Now poor Gaul is the only one left over from the early days. Much of his power has waned, but still he hopes—”

Shouts from outside drew Gaul to the window. “They’re here,” he said, removing his bathrobe. “You must go.”

“Where’s the Necronomicon?” Lola said, her voice harsh and shrill.

Standing naked before them, Gaul stuck a finger in his bellybutton. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Look, we don’t have time to stand around while you pick lint. Tell us where you hid the damned book.”

Franz grabbed Lola’s arm. “We have to go.”

The voices outside grew louder.

Franz opened his mouth to tell Gaul that they were leaving, but the sight of the naked hermit stopped him cold. Gaul slid two more fingers into his bellybutton, sinking them knuckle-deep. His belly splooshed and emitted an odor of rot accompanied by a foul yellow liquid.

Downstairs, the door lurched under a platoon of fists.

Gaul’s hand slid wrist-deep into his stomach. His bellybutton stretched wider.

Franz heard the front door explode, followed by the trample of angry vampires surging into the cottage.

Gaul’s canine teeth flared over the lip of his fake beard. He ripped his stomach apart, tearing away his flesh like a husk or a piece of clothing, and his stomach’s contents fell to the floor.

Among the squirming coils of Gaul’s innards, a book screamed through blackened lips. Eyeless. A wrinkled blob of bookflesh warped by endless years of breathing blood.

Footsteps clattered on the stairs.

Lola darted forward and scooped the Necronomicon from the pile of guts. She thrust the heavy tome into Franz’s arms and pushed him toward the window.

She threw open the shutters and hopped onto the ledge. “Climb onto my back,” she said.

Franz turned toward the doorway. The footsteps were fast approaching. He shoved the soggy book down his pants and climbed onto Lola’s back.

Lola spread her batwings and leaped from the ledge.

They fell.

Nosedived.

Until a gust of wind swept them upward.

They circled the peak of Gaul’s mountain, spiraling in a swift current that propelled them toward their cottage on the far side of town.

They passed over the Bat Cave, where a riot had broken out.

They flew faster, home.

As Gaul bled to death, he lamented the fate of the vampires. He had withheld a vital piece of information from Franz and Lola. Yes, Cthulhu would save the planet, but Gaul had neglected to mention all that salvation entailed, which essentially boiled down to the total annihilation of the vampire race. After Cthulhu returned darkness to the planet, unspeakable ghouls and other beasts borne up out of the collective unconscious of the vampires would rise from the black muck of the planet. And if the monsters failed to wipe out the vampires, Cthulhu would take care of them personally. Gaul just hoped that none of them had to face down Cthulhu in the eldritch hero’s favorite death game, an eating contest of cosmic proportions.

Fang Foot’s henchmen burst into the library and crowded around Gaul’s crumpled body. He closed his eyes and died with a smile on his face, relieved to be through with the suffering of the flesh.

Kayla parked her hearse beside the seashore.

A distant light without an apparent source cast an eerie green glow on the horizon. As the excitement in the car turned to anxiety, they stopped talking over each other, and then they stopped talking entirely.

The waves, jagged in the howling wind, pounded against the frosty shore.

Nothing was more commonplace than violence, and what they needed to pick their spirits up was an overdose of the normal.

Kayla popped the trunk and they got out of the car. They stood around the trunk, Isaac and Cyrus on opposite sides of Kayla.

“Maybe we can squeeze the babies out,” Isaac said.

Cyrus had no clue what he was talking about. From the look on Kayla’s face, he suspected that she didn’t know either.

“Yeah, squeeze the babies out,” Cyrus said, hoping to appease his friend and soon-to-be executioner.

“We should hurry,” Kayla said.

She opened a large velvet bag with the words Pickman’s Costume Emporium stitched into the side.

“Just warning you, they were out of Cthulhu costumes, so I went with the next best things.”

She pulled out two plush masks and a body suit for each. She handed a furry black goat mask to Isaac.

“Sweet, Shub-Niggurath!” he said, fitting the mask over his head.

“Actually,” Kayla said, “it’s the Black Goat. The Necronomicon describes Shub-Niggurath as ‘an evil cloud-like entity,’ which that silly goat mask obviously does not represent.”

Isaac took off the mask, looking disappointed. “I thought Shub-Niggurath was the Black Goat.”

“That’s because you spend all your time listening to music and huffing blood blisters when you should be reading the Necronomicon. Besides, Shub-Niggurath is a female. Do you want Cthulhu to mistake you for a girl?”

“I ain’t no girl,” Isaac muttered.

He dressed in a black rubber body suit and slipped the mask over his head.

“Do I look sinister or what?” he said. “I am the Black Goat. I will eat your babies and shit. Come on, guys. I look sinister, right? I said I’ll eat your fucking babies.”

Kayla rolled her eyes.

Isaac batted at the yellow felt horns of his mask, muttering to himself.

Kayla handed a tentacled, seaweed-colored mask to Cyrus.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“A squid.”

“So we’re summoning, correct me if I’m wrong, the supreme eldritch force of the universe, and I’ll be dressed as a squid.”

Kayla threw up her hands. “I compared it to the Cthulhu costume. They’re exactly the same. They use the same exact pattern for both costumes. One of them comes with a cape, is all.”

“You said they were out of Cthulhu costumes.”

“I lied, okay? The Cthulhu costume cost twice as much. I’m sorry, I wasn’t going to pay that kind of money for a stupid cape.”

“You realize money is useless after tonight, don’t you. That in the grand scheme of everything you’re an idiot for not blowing every cent you own.”

“Excuse me if I forgot.” Kayla wiped a few tears from her eyes. “I went into Pickman’s and saw the price on Cthulhu and thought, no way. I thought how I needed to make my next car payment on time and save up so I can move out of my parent’s basement by the end of this decade. It wasn’t until I was driving over to your place that I realized money doesn’t mean anything anymore. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Cyrus said. “I kind of always knew I would die like an invertebrate.”

Kayla looked as if she would start bawling. Instead, she clenched her jaw and ground her teeth. Cyrus cringed at the grating noise.

A steely expression clouded the vulnerability in Kayla’s eyes. Her moment of opening up, of revealing that she felt as scared as Cyrus, was over.

“Anyway, there’s a theme to our costumes,” she said.

She removed a third mask from the bag and placed it over her head.

“You’re a bird,” Cyrus said flatly.

“Yeah, so together we embody land, sea, and air.”

“Then who’s fire?” Isaac asked.

Kayla ignored him as she stepped into the clawed feet of her feathered bird costume.

Cyrus struggled into his green rubber jumpsuit, feeling like the cheap knockoff of an eldritch god.

Cthulhu had not always been a hamburger connoisseur. A long time ago, he was a master of the mystic art of sushi. He owned Floating World, a floating restaurant on Tokyo Bay in Japan, on a planet warmer than this one. He was renowned by people rich and poor as the greatest sushi chef in the world. He prepared all the rolls and sashimi varieties known in the modern world, but also possessed a mastery of the most ancient form of sushi, narezushi, from which sushi derived its definition, which means “sour-smelling.” Narezushi was a preparation of fermented fish and rice preserved with salt. The vinegar produced by the fermenting rice broke down the fish proteins into amino acids, resulting in a sour taste. Originally, when the fermented fish was taken out of the rice, only the fish was consumed and the rice was discarded.

Cthulhu first made a name for himself in the cutthroat sushi business by putting an alcoholic spin on the historical narezushi. His fish contained more alcohol than sake, and it tasted great too. People flocked to Floating World day and night. The only people absent from the constant crowds were food critics and other sushi chefs, all of whom derided Cthulhu as a charlatan and a hack. Even after the people took to celebrating Cthulhu’s sushi with street parades and national holidays, the critics and restaurateurs stayed away. They fumed, in bitter jealousy, scheming to take down Cthulhu and Floating World.

By this point, their restaurants had all closed down and the critics had been fired, for nobody was interested in any food other than what Cthulhu served up.

Their careers ruined, they locked themselves in a dungeon and vowed to stay down there until they had thought up a solution. They did not even pause to eat or sleep. On the twenty-eighth day, by then delirious and stark raving, they burst out of the dungeon and ransacked an electronics store, making away with every television on the shelves. They intended to throw these televisions into Tokyo Bay, to electrocute Cthulhu and everyone aboard Floating World, but on the way they ran by a feline café (one of those places where you can go to pet cats in Japan, because people in Japan cannot own cats). This ignited a spark of brilliance in the fractured mind of one former restaurant owner. Passing the feline café, he shouted for all his fellow foodies to hear, “What are televisions without cats?”

They halted in their tracks, gave up a great big cheer, and robbed the café of all its cats.

With cats and televisions in tow, they made their way down to Tokyo Bay. They broke out the screens of the televisions and stuffed the cats inside, as if giving new life to the broken televisions by implanting furry guts. Before the police who were now gathered could stop them, the critics and restaurant owners and chefs heaved the cat-filled televisions into the bay, and a great electric meow rose up from the deep.

This was how the elites of Japan’s food culture invented the internet.

Despite their prompt incarceration and eventual execution, Cthulhu’s enemies had succeeded in their mission. The internet proved to be far more addictive than his sushi. Every day thereafter, less and less people showed up at Floating World, opting to stay home and look at cats with the new technology.

Within a year, Cthulhu closed the doors on Floating World for the final time. He was so depressed on his walk home that fateful day that he stumbled into one of the internet cafes that had suddenly opened everywhere. Through no conscious thought or effort, he sat down at one of the terminals and began clicking around.

A Lolcat popped up on the screen and broke away the ice that had formed around Cthulhu’s heart. The Lolcat conquered his depression.

Twelve hours of Lolcats later, Cthulhu rose on wobbly, bloodless legs and declared, “I can has cheezburger!”

And so he commenced his quest for the perfect hamburger.

Unfortunately, he never found much success, for he was a sushi master at heart. After a few luckless years, the internet cats seized power and Cthulhu moved away from Japan.

He found a cold and icy planet with a great big body of water, the perfect house for his depression, which had grown inside him like an egg despite his Lolcat addiction. Sinking to the bottom of the sea, he found a desolate reef and crawled inside, then passed into a snoring, dreamless slumber that commenced unbroken for fathomless years.

Once inside, Franz and Lola locked the door and peeped through the curtains.

“Do you think they followed us?” Lola asked.

“No, we flew too fast. They’ll have to descend the mountain.”

“Remember, it’s Fang Foot who’s after the Necronomicon. When the book fails to turn up among Gaul’s possessions, he’ll come after us.”

“We’ll lie. We’ll say that Gaul told us the whole story about the Necronomicon, that he threatened to kill us and destroy the book. We’ll say we had no choice but to murder him in order to restore the book to Fang Foot, its rightful owner. Then we’ll give the book to Fang Foot and move underground with the others.”

“You would dishonor Gaul so quickly? After everything he did for you?”

“It’s not dishonoring him if our only other option is getting killed. As long as we’re alive, we still have a chance. Being dead doesn’t help anyone. Except . . .”

“Except what?”

“Except if you die to become the virginal firstborn sacrifice nobody wants to make.”

“Our Lion Man was a genius.”

Franz and Lola kissed, their spirits renewed in the battle for environmental justice.

“Come on, let’s go raise Cthulhu with this ancient book. It’s sticking to my thighs,” Franz said.

“Where should we do the ritual?”

“Our sacrifice is already in the cellar, and that’s the least likely place they’ll look for us. Want to do it there?”

“Sure, but let’s pack our bags first. We should make it look as if we’re already gone.”

Franz nodded. “Good plan.”

They spent the next half hour throwing clothes into suitcases, emptying their cask of blood into portable pint bottles, and rushing through the house, ensuring that everything gave the impression of a quick exit. They packed their toothbrushes, but left the blankets in their coffin disheveled. No one leaving home without a plan of return would ever make their coffin.

“How’s the book holding up?” Lola asked.

Franz reached a hand down his pants and fingered the large rectangular bulge. “Yeah, it’s definitely sticking to my flesh. Can we do the summoning now?”

“Sure, take these suitcases outside.” Lola pointed at the two bulkiest, heaviest suitcases.

Franz groaned.

“We’re not leaving them inside,” Lola said. “Even if we hide them in our coffin or something, anyone snooping around will find them. If we bring them down to the cellar and someone happens to discover us, we’ll tell them we were only saying goodbye to our dead baby boy, then you can tell them all those lies about Gaul. Is that a good enough plan?”

Franz knew from her tone that she did not want him to answer this question, so he nodded acquiescently and lifted the heavy suitcases.

“I’m not carrying these all the way underground, you know,” Franz said on his way out the door.

“If Cthulhu rises, you won’t have to.”

Even though Franz was walking in front of Lola, he could sense the listen or fuck off smile on her face. He loved her listen or fuck off smile. It never failed to make him feel like jumping her bones. The world was ending and he could think of no one else he would rather spend it with.

“Bats fly too,” Isaac said.

He grunted as he lifted the duffel bag full of weapons.

“Duh.” Kayla said. She threw her backpack, the one purportedly holding a real copy of the Necronomicon, over her shoulder.

“Just saying, you could have chosen something more sinister.”

“Fuck you. Birds are scary shit.”

“Okay, yeah, whatever.”

Cyrus slammed the trunk and hurried to catch up with his bickering friends.

“Birds are sinister too,” he said, hoping it wasn’t too late to convince Kayla that Isaac might make a better sacrifice.

“Shutup, pussyfat. You’re only saying that because we’re about to smear your guts all over the ice.”

“Don’t be a prick, Isaac,” Kayla said.

“Only wish I had a stick of dynamite to shove up your ass.”

“I said don’t.”

Cyrus felt wounded by Isaac’s words. He could not understand where the maliciousness was coming from.

About a hundred yards from the hearse, Kayla stopped walking and told him to lie down on his back.

Cyrus complied, as he knew he always would.

“It’s torture time!”

“No, Isaac. It’s time for ritual sacrifice. We are not sick murderers. We are sorcerers of the dark arts.”

“Oh, right.”

“Can I do one thing before I die?” Cyrus asked.

Kayla looked skeptical. “What is it?”

“I want to see the real Necronomicon. I want to hold it in my hands.”

“We’re running out of time.”

“I’m asking for one minute. That’s all. I promise.”

Kayla sighed heavily. “Fine.”

Cyrus propped himself on his knees as Kayla unzipped her backpack.

Although they often spoke of having read the Necronomicon, the truth was that none of them had seen the actual book, let alone read a single passage from it. Well, maybe Kayla had, after she nabbed it under mysterious circumstances the previous night.

What they had read was an approximation of the book. Some vampire, writing under the pen name Diablo Rex, purportedly dreamed up the entire original text of the Necronomicon and wrote it down in a book.

After this forgery summoned the ghoul that robbed the blood bank, Cyrus and his friends began treating it like the real thing. However, when it came to summoning Cthulhu, there could be no replacement. Even Diablo Rex warned never to attempt summoning Cthulhu without the real Necronomicon, the location of which was a mystery. Nihilistic consequences of cosmic proportions would befall any who attempted summoning the evilest force in the universe with a false book.

“Be careful, it’s fragile,” Kayla said, her voice quivering.

Her hands trembled as Cyrus took the real Necronomicon from her. It was a thick, warped tome bound in flesh, just as the legends said. Cyrus felt its nightmare energy surging through his fingertips. He opened the book to see if it was written in blood and . . . “Is that a unicorn?”

He turned the page. Another unicorn. And it wasn’t dying or suffering. It wasn’t even inked in blood.

He eyed Kayla, bewildered.

“Did you forge this?”

“Tracking down the real thing is impossible. It might not even exist anymore.”

“You told us you had found it.”

“I did. You’re holding it right now.”

“But this. . .” Cyrus turned page after page “. . . this is a handmade book full of unicorn pictures.”

“I didn’t want to tear up any of my own books, and my sister had so many dumb coloring books lying around.”

“So you planned on killing me and then reading from a coloring book?”

“Still plan on it, in fact. Let me explain.”

“I’m all ears.”

“A few weeks ago I was rereading the Necronomicon, I mean the Diablo Rex version, when I started picking up on the true meaning of the text. He’s not saying that his is the one true version of the Necronomicon—”

“Actually, he claims that his is the one true version several times throughout the book.”

“Never mind what he says on the surface. It’s what’s beneath the tip of the iceberg that counts.”

“Let me guess. There are unicorns beneath the iceberg.”

“No. Not under every iceberg, but maybe. There might be unicorns. In this case, yes, definitely unicorns beneath the iceberg.”

Cyrus closed the book and handed it back to her. “I’m sorry, I can’t go through with this,” he said, hoping in his heart that Kayla was not as crazy as he suspected. He started to stand up, but Isaac pushed him back down, and then slapped him for good measure.

“Let me finish,” Kayla said. “There’s no such thing as the real Necronomicon because every Necronomicon is real. See, like, Diablo Rex created his Necronomicon, and that’s real to him. This here is mine, and it’s real to me. That’s the whole message. Whatever you create is real.”

“You can’t just bind a bunch of unicorn pictures together and call it a magical sacred text. What is that cover made of anyway?”

“My dad was throwing out some skin samples from his lab, so I asked and he gave them to me.”

“Your dad is awesome. I wish my dad gave me skin and stuff,” Isaac said, missing the greater significance of the conversation.

Kayla punched Isaac in the chest and scolded him for being an idiot.

Seeing his chance, Cyrus sprang to his feet and lunged for the duffel bag. The six-shooter beckoned to him from within. LIFE, the gun called, SHOOT TO LIVE.

He went to it even as the ugly fists beat him back.

Only after the chamber clicked empty could he open his eyes, but the squid mask had slipped down and he could not reach up to adjust it. The fists were still alive, swinging a whole lot harder.

Then the ice began to crack.

Franz lost a lot of leg hair removing the Necronomicon from his crotch. Vampires were not supposed to grow leg hair, but Franz had a strain of barbarian in his genetic pool. He tossed the book on the frozen dirt floor of the shed, pulled his pants up, and crouched down beside Lola. “Okay, how do we do this?” he said.

Lola opened the Necronomicon and studied the first page intently. “First, slide Lion Man off the meat hook.”

“Are you reading from the book or making this up? Because that looks like a different language to me.”

“Just do it,” Lola snapped.

Franz obeyed. He slid their baby off the meat hook and laid the headless body beside the Necronomicon. “What next?”

Lola flipped back and forth between several pages, muttering to herself. She sighed, frustrated. “I give up. The book has detailed pictorial instructions on sacrificing virginal firstborns, but says nothing about what to do with the virgin after you’ve sacrificed it.”

“Let me look.”

Lola pushed the book in front of Franz.

The meaning of the words was lost on him, but with the aid of the gratuitous, anatomically accurate images of virginal firstborn sacrifice, he deciphered the general meaning of the text. He nodded, studying the pictures for some key that would unlock Cthulhu from the depths.

He turned page after page, learning more about virginal firstborn sacrifice and not much else.

“Any luck?”

Franz grunted. He was too absorbed in the book, too close to the key.

When he reached the last page, the Necronomicon was still describing virginal firstborn sacrifice.

He looked up at Lola, smiling.

“What?” she said. “It’s not a big joke, is it? Did Gaul give us the wrong book?”

“It’s the easiest book in the world,” Franz said. He brushed his black hair out of his face and dragged Lion Man closer to him. “Unless I’m totally off the mark, the book should become a totally new book every time we do what it says. Right now, it’s telling us to sacrifice a virginal firstborn.”

“And we already did.”

“But it’s a book. It doesn’t know that.”

“So how do we tell the book we’ve sacrificed a virginal firstborn?”

“By spilling blood. Just how we’re reading the book to glean information, the book demands information from us as well. The book reads our actions as information, but it can only read our actions if we put them down on the page.”

“What does it want?”

“Right now it wants a sacrifice. It could want anything next.”

“So we need Lion Man to bleed on the page?”

Franz nodded. “If I’m correct about all this.”

Franz and Lola dragged Lion Man’s headless body between them. He no longer expelled the heat of a dead vampire. He was frozen solid.

Franz and Lola clawed at him, breaking their nails against his icy flesh.

“There’s no way we’re going to draw blood,” Franz said.

Lola stood and hurried to the tool shelf at the far end of the cellar. She returned with a chainsaw. Revving its motor, she shouted, “Get back!”

Franz jumped out of the way as she lowered the blade to the baby’s torso. This was why he and Lola were so perfect together. While he could figure out the puzzles she might never solve in a million years, she knew how to handle the problems of the physical world that he was helpless against. Together, they could conquer anything.

She used the chainsaw to make a circuit of wide, shallow cuts, removing the icy outer flesh and relying on the chainsaw’s motion to thaw Lion Man’s blood.

Slowly, ice blood turned to slush. Lola killed the chainsaw. Franz dipped his hand into the gored pool of his son’s belly. He dribbled blood onto the open face of the Necronomicon.

He and Lola leaned over the book, waiting for something to happen.

“Maybe it wants more blood,” Lola shrugged. She scooped blood into her cupped palms and spilled it over the book.

Still, nothing happened.

“Maybe we were supposed to kill the virginal firstborn ourselves,” Franz said.

“Do you think the Necronomicon knows the difference?”

“It seems pretty thorough,” Franz said, thumbing the pages of the thick, flesh-bound book.

A pain erupted in his hand.

He cried out and withdrew his hand, cradling it against his chest.

His thumb fell off.

He looked to Lola, seeking pity, hoping she would tell him that everything was fine, but Lola had yet to notice that his thumb had fallen off.

Her eyes were fixed on the Necronomicon.

The pages touched by blood rose in a mass of bubbling, leathery boils. When they popped, the book boils coughed up waxen cobwebs that smelled of sea salt and newborn baby.

Franz forgot his severed thumb, enraptured by the scent of the cobwebs. He had not smelled that newborn baby smell since the first days of Lion Man’s brief life. By the end of his second week as a living, breathing vampire, Lion Man’s pure and natural odor had diminished, replaced by the odorous cornucopia of the cold world around him.

The boiling pages melted away. The cobwebs disintegrated. All that remained were new words on old pages. The book was different, not destroyed.

Lola finally took notice of his thumb. She picked it up and stared at Franz worriedly. “Are we going to lose a body part for every step we complete?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Do we have a choice?”

“I guess you’re right. Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

She kissed his severed thumb and set it down beside her. “I’ll sew it back on later. Remind me to fetch my sewing kit from inside.”

“We’d better move on with the summoning,” Franz said, staring at his thumbless hand with an empty expression.

Lola turned the Necronomicon back to the first page, which was blank, excepting a red circle. Lola flipped to the next page, and the next. They discovered the same red circle on every page.

“This one is easy,” Franz said.

“Let me guess. Magic circle.”

“Exactly.”

Franz picked up his severed thumb and drew a circle around them with the bloody end. After closing the circle, he used the thumb to trace one of the red circles in the Necronomicon. He withdrew his hand before the book slammed shut and the mouth on the cover opened up. A dusty tongue of wrinkled paper unfurled from the mouth. The paper tongue latched onto the thumb and pried it from Franz’s grasp. The book swallowed his thumb, licked its fleshy lips, and the strange, flat mouth fell dormant again.

Franz tweezed the upper corner of the cover between two fingers. He threw open the book with a shudder.

Now words were running on the pages, words pursuing other words, a letter train dissolving into formless voids beyond the confines of the frame.

“Do you think we’re supposed to read?” Lola asked.

Franz nodded his head. “But how?”

Lola unsheathed the dagger gartered to her leg. She stabbed through the pages, pinning certain words in place. The words screamed out as they were swarmed by other words, words that fed like vampires.

Lola dragged the wounded words across the page. The frenzied eaters followed. She pressed her cupped hand to the edge of the book and flicked the dagger-pinned words into her palm. Ravenous, the others jumped.

Off the page the words fell dead.

The sinister message that they formed left Franz and Lola silent.

Saint Caution, his dim panic, fled into a box of dead beliefs. Now the squid god returns for the sad-faced husband, Saint Caution. There will be no asylum. No escape behind the narrow houses. No escape in the sepulcher of the sea. No escape between the pages of the flesh-bound book. No escape underground. Death is a monolith of faces, winged and all-seeing. Saint Caution unearthed the silence. Now the squid god is sky-flung aboard his ship of stars. The tentacled madness Cthulhu will arrive with the dawn of new dark, and make a fiend of the icy earth. Geometry, thrown into chaos, correlates the delirious architecture of the Cyclopean city R’lyeh, with the abandoned town. The god of R’lyeh rises, awoken by the science of the high priests, and the awakener, Saint Caution, must give in to the stars, or their light will smote his bat-winged wife.

Like a beacon in the sky or the result of a mysterious call on a payphone, the fat, depressed squid god instantaneously transformed into a megalithic, cyclopean, raging warrior at the beckoning of the Necronomicon. He increased in size by twenty-three, exploded through the roof of the diner and declared, in reference to his favorite internet website, “I can has power up!”

Kayla and Isaac stood over Cyrus, breathing heavily in their bird and goat masks.

The ice had cracked from added pressure and they’d floated away from shore on a little island. None of them knew how to swim. There was no turning back. They would either kill each other or die as friends.

“There’s no easy way out,” Cyrus said. “Even if you kill me, you’ll die.”

“We’d planned on dying all along,” Kayla said.

“But without the Necronomicon—”

“I have it right here.” Kayla lifted the unicorn Necronomicon from beneath the folds of her rubber jumpsuit.

“Let’s kill this suck-face,” Isaac said, swinging the sledgehammer over his shoulder. It was the only weapon that had not sunk or been left behind on shore.

“We’re doing this together,” Kayla said.

Isaac looked at her with a confused and frustrated expression. She ignored him, kneeling down beside Cyrus on the ice and opening the flesh-bound book across her lap.

“What about the sacrifice?” Isaac asked, outraged.

“We’re all dead anyway. We’re all the sacrifice,” Cyrus said, gazing longingly at the shore.

“Sit down, Isaac,” Kayla said.

“No,” he said, and brought the sledgehammer down.

Before he completed his swing, a beam of light flashed down from the sky and severed his right arm at the shoulder. The sledgehammer thudded against the ice as he fell to his knees. He clutched his wounded shoulder, screaming.

The darkness around them smoldered and in places blinked away. Kayla cast the book into the sea, stood, and lifted up the sledgehammer.

Cyrus watched helplessly as her eyes flitted between him and Isaac. She was deciding which one to sacrifice.

And ultimately it didn’t matter.

He would die by drowning, bludgeon, or evisceration in the light.

So he knelt there—barely breathing because the squid mask constricted breath—to let her make the big decision.

And in spite of everything, he loved her more than ever.

“Who is Saint Caution?”

“It’s me,” Franz said. “At least I’m guessing it’s me.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Gaul never said a word about the summoners being sacrificed.”

“He probably didn’t know.”

“Or he feared we’d wimp out.”

“There’s no point thinking about it now. We’ve already summoned Cthulhu.”

“Have we? Maybe I have to give in to the stars first, like the message says, and if I don’t, then no Cthulhu. The light will come and make the planet’s surface uninhabitable, but we’ll survive. We can live underground for the rest of our lives. That’s not such a bad ending, right? At least better than one of us dying.”

“Franz, it’s too late for that. Look.”

“How can you say that? I’m going to die.”

“I mean look out!”

Lola tackled Franz to the floor as a fat white worm with razor-toothed jaws struck out at them. The worm recoiled, hissing, preparing for another strike.

They looked beyond the white worm to the sunken corners of the cellar. Shambling ghouls rose out of the darkness where the walls became the floor.

Franz groped around for Lion Man, wrapping his fingers around the baby’s ankle. The white worm made a second strike and he swung Lion Man like a battering club. The white worm flew backwards and landed, lifeless, at the amorphous feet of the things shambling closer.

Lion Man shattered into a million gelid pieces that scattered like marbles across the floor of the cellar.

“Run!” Lola screamed.

She helped Franz to his feet and they turned, hand in hand, toward the stairs leading to the cellar door.

An invisible wall blocked their advance.

They surged ahead only to be dead-halted once more.

The invisible wall was rising from the magic circle.

“We were tricked. We painted a circle in reverse. It won’t let us out.”

“Will it let those things in?”

Franz nodded his head. “I’m afraid it will.”

“Good,” Lola said.

She bent over and picked up the chainsaw.

The nearest ghoul whipped its elephantine trunk across the circle’s border.

Lola sheared off the nozzle at the base. The maimed creature howled as bubbling black ooze gushed from its jagged bone-hole.

Before a second creature attacked, Franz slipped his right arm into the severed nozzle of the shambler. He stood, barely able to lift his giant arm. He felt the trunk sucking on him and hoped he would be able to remove it later.

An entire horde of shambling ghouls swarmed at once.

Confined to the reverse magic circle, Franz and Lola fought shoulder to shoulder against the infernal cosmic beasts.

When all the shambling things were down, Lola tossed the chainsaw aside and marched over the dismembered bodies, a bridge across the circle.

“Aren’t you going to take that?” Franz asked as he struggled to remove the nozzle of the shambler from his arm.

“If we’re moving underground forever, I’d rather bring my clothes.”

The corpses were bubbling down to nothing, so Franz left the circle before his path across the backs of the dead creatures disappeared.

“I suppose Cthulhu must be out there somewhere. Do you suppose he’ll save us still? Were these ghouls a test? Or did we just unleash an unspeakable evil?”

“Am I supposed to answer that?” Lola said, lugging the two heavy suitcases up the cellar stairs.

“You were,” Franz muttered.

He started to follow after her but remembered his thumb. He turned back but then remembered that the Necronomicon had swallowed it. He looked down at his new arm and wondered if the mutation was going to spread throughout his body, spread and turn him into a nightmare. He climbed the stairs, saying goodbye to his shattered son as he closed the cellar door for the final time.

She was a lantern of ghostly delight. Cyrus felt happy standing beside her. He was happy not to have drowned. Kayla and Isaac, they both drowned. When the ice cracked and the three of them fell through, Isaac was swinging at him with his remaining arm. Kayla held in her hands the hulking sledgehammer. Kayla had swung to hit either Cyrus or Isaac and there would never be any way to tell. Perhaps she’d hoped to sink them in this way. All of this hardly mattered to Cyrus. He had this new girl now.

“So what’s your name?” she asked.

“Cyrus Lugosi,” he said, surprised to hear his own voice underwater.

“Everybody calls me Burn Girl.”

“Burn Girl. That’s nice.”

“Are you from the surface?”

“Yes, I am. Do you live down here?”

“I do a good deal of traveling.”

“I’m glad we can have a conversation. I didn’t think communication was possible underwater.”

“Are you hungry? You look famished. There’s a great diner not far away and I love to go there. In fact, I was just leaving there when I bumped into you.”

“If you were just leaving, why would you want to go back?”

“I am always coming or going from the diner. There’s not much to do down here, if you can imagine.”

“Let’s call it a date,” Cyrus said, charmed by this sudden upswing in his life.

Perhaps he would live under the sea with this darling Burn Girl forever.

He wondered if she listened to black metal.

Since their aerial return from Gaul’s mountain, the darkness had abated. Like tea in which too much water has been poured, the dark grew weak, becoming almost nothing.

“We’ll never make it underground in time,” Franz said.

Lola responded by dropping her suitcases and running out of their fenced-in yard. Franz stumbled after her, his weight off-balance due to his new giant arm. He thought Lola must be serious if she was leaving her clothes behind.

They traveled the road that led to the Bat Cave as the darkness, ever lighter, illuminated the melting ice.

“If the ice melts entirely, the underground will flood,” Franz panted. He struggled to keep stride with Lola. “And what if more of those shambling things come after us? For all we know, they can manifest anywhere.”

Lola shook her head. “I think they were just guardians of the Necronomicon. In case the book falls into the wrong hands.”

“Are we the wrong hands?”

“Can we focus on getting underground? The darkness is disappearing. We’re going to be a couple of vampire crisps.”

“Hey, that sounds kind of romantic.”

Lola pulled ahead of Franz.

When they reached the edge of town, sunbeams broke the black shell of the sky. Light passed through a hunchbacked, elderly vampire of indeterminate gender. For a moment, the vampire’s rheumatic skeleton lit up, visible beneath clothes and skin. The x-ray vision vanished and the vampire sizzled into a gray cloud that evaporated in seconds. All that remained was a shadow smeared across the ice.

More vampires—all old or disabled—cried out for help as Franz and Lola ran by. Some of them disintegrated and became shadows on the ice. Others were engulfed in flames. A few wept on covered porches, stranded now in houses that were islands, where soon they would starve and die alone or else be brave and throw themselves into the light.

“We’re almost there,” Lola shouted to Franz.

If one of them tripped and fell, the light would probably overtake them. They were that close to the end.

The stairwell to the underground appeared in the distance, about a block away. They would make it. They would not become shadows on the ice.

But a newborn’s mewling split the air, breaking the clip of Lola’s step.

She stumbled and fell.

Curse the sea wolves, she fell.

Franz scooped her in his giant arm and barreled toward the stairwell. He felt the light searching for blood, searching the earth like a dog, hungry for bodies to burn.

Lola squirmed out of his grasp and followed the cries of the baby.

“Lola, no!” Franz screamed as she disappeared inside a house.

He stopped running. Without her, he may as well burn.

“Lola, we have to go!”

At the very least, he wanted her in his arms when the light struck, so their shadows might be intertwined. As the ice melted, they would melt together.

She emerged from the house with the crying baby in tow. She met Franz in the middle of the road. Side by side they carried on. Only half a block to go before the chase would end. So close, yet Franz would give his limbs, his eyesight, anything, to reach the end a second sooner.

Franz reached the stairs first. Lola had fallen behind. The infant weighed her down. Franz turned to help her.

Moments from safety, a light ray screamed across the sky, razing her legs behind the knees.

She collapsed, the baby cradled in her arms. Franz stretched out his mutant arm and dragged Lola from the warpath of the light. She painted two red smears along the snow, frail red shadows of blood and light, until they found themselves underground, cast in total darkness once again.

The sunlight came from nowhere.

Sarah managed to shutter off the upper floor before any harm was done. Ella Lugosi and her two children were tied up, safe.

Sarah bided her time in the room that belonged to Cyrus. Shuttering the windows to keep out the light had actually calmed her nerves. She performed well under pressure. Now she was falling apart once more.

The record player was still warm. She moved the needle to the start of the record and it began to spin. Although the noise that came out sounded nothing like music to her, she turned the volume louder, so loud it hurt her ears. Anything was better than the obscene shrieks of Ella Lugosi.

Although Sarah wanted to untie the children, she just didn’t know how to handle them, couldn’t help viewing them as little monsters no better than their mother, after seeing them eat those eggs out of that hole.

Now light was eating up the world.

Side One of the record ended and she turned it over. Halfway through Side Two, a long-awaited text from Bruno buzzed in on her Ice Chatter.

Hey babelicious, I’ve been looking all over for you. You underground?

Underground? I’m at the Lugosi’s.

When Bruno did not respond, she texted him again. What is going on?

The darkness has died.

Save me.

I’ve got to get to Muscle Island.

Please.

I can save the planet with my muscles.

Come for me. Don’t leave me.

I won’t, babelicious. Hang tight.

I love you. She did not know if she truly loved Bruno, but she felt right then in that moment more capable of loving—and more desperate for the love of others—than ever before in her life. She also realized that if it had been Fang Foot, she would have spelled it “luv” instead of “love.” Despite his smooth looks and hip attitude, Bruno retained a sense of eloquence, even in his text messages. Perhaps, when this nightmare ended, they would live happily ever after.

Her Ice Chatter remained dormant. No “I love you too” ever materialized. She held out hope that something terrible had happened, preventing Bruno from confessing his true love for her. Perhaps there was bad reception underground. Perhaps Fang Foot and Bruno finally had a showdown and tore each other apart in a savage attempt to assert the dominance of their love. Perhaps Bruno was destroyed by light and died still trying to text her. So many things could have gone wrong. All that mattered was that he loved her, so she held out hope that alive or dead, he lived or died in her honor.

When they reached the diner, there wasn’t much left but a couple of charred tables and a dented fryer. The roof and walls had collapsed. Everything else, incinerated. The diner appeared to have been destroyed by a bomb.

Burn Girl looked hopelessly sad.

“Cthulhu must have done it,” she said. “He mentioned something about being summoned.”

Cyrus experienced a moment of pride and self-accomplishment. He believed that he and his friends had summoned Cthulhu after all.

The sadness left Burn Girl’s expression, replaced by a burning anger. She exploded into a column of flames. Cyrus leapt out of the way of the fire.

The flaming column reverted back to the shape of a girl. She smiled mischievously. “We’ll have to seek revenge on him. I will destroy Cthulhu for destroying my favorite diner,” Burn Girl said. “First, I’d like a milkshake. There’s another place on the other side of the sea. It’s not as good as this diner was, but the options are pretty limited down here. I hope you don’t mind walking.”

Cyrus did not mind walking. He made a mental note not to cross Burn Girl if he could help it.

Burn Girl took his hand and they walked away together, leaving the ruins of the lonely diner behind.

“Where is the Necronomicon now?” Fang Foot demanded.

Franz had just finished telling the Council everything that happened since they fled Gaul’s cottage with the Necronomicon. Although he’d planned on lying to Fang Foot, more of the incriminating truth poured out every time he opened his mouth. He wished Lola were conscious. She would shut him up and speak for them both.

Now Franz, Lola, and the baby were being carted off to a cell, where they would be held until Fang Foot decided what to do with them.

“You can’t lock us up,” Franz shouted. “We are not criminals, we are environmentalists!”

“Shut up. We’re giving you a periscope so you can witness all the environmental destruction you want,” said one of the guards.

“You’re making a mistake.”

The guards ignored him.

They tossed him into a cell, followed by Lola, who was wheeled in on a stretcher, and the baby, carried by a guard. The guard handed the baby to Franz. They locked the door. There was nowhere to go.

He set the baby on the stretcher right where Lola’s knees should have been.

The periscope, jutting down into the center of the cell, reminded him of the cylindrical chimney in Gaul’s cabin.

He peered into the viewer, entertaining a hope that he would look out and see Cthulhu saving the planet, on his way to rescue them. Outside, orbs of fuzzy light blossomed in the air. He could make out the sea in the distance, pale crashing wave crests glimmering like the knife wounds of a stabbed ghost. He felt a shiny liquid diamond of sadness harden in his chest, knowing that Lion Man’s head must have burned out there. A shadow dispersed by the tide.

Far out on the horizon, a black speck loomed.

A silent ship?

When the speck did not move, Franz shook the periscope, assuming the speck had to be debris on the lens, or perhaps a dead insect trapped in the glass. Returning his focus to the viewer, he found the speck had quintupled in size. The speck had precisely quintupled. What did Gaul say that one time about the mystical meaning of quintupling?

The speck became a large shadow and gained focus. The shadow looked a lot like a winged squid. Franz squinted to get a better look, but blackness rolled across the sky and he saw nothing, not even the lights. The crummy periscope must have broken.

He checked on Lola. Her legs were still bleeding. She’d already lost so much blood. She would need to feed soon.

She smiled in her sleep. He kissed her and thought how nice a blood beer would be right now.

Returning to the periscope, Franz observed a twitch inside the blackness, a shudder as of congealed heart blood.

The tentacled darkness convulsed, swallowing the last of the sun blossoms in spiny obsidian mouths that disintegrated into each other like the beckoning Rorschach embryos of a ruined organism.

As Cthulhu flew over the icy planet, sewing seeds that would sprout into all the ingredients necessary for a perfect hamburger, he sang a little song to himself:

Old Cthulhu had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

And on his farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O

With a “moo-moo” here and a “moo-moo” there

Here a “moo” there a “moo”

Everywhere a “moo-moo”

Old Cthulhu had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Old Cthulhu had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

And on his farm he had a pig, E-I-E-I-O

With a (snort) here and a (snort) there

Here a (snort) there a (snort)

Everywhere a (snort-snort)

With a “moo-moo” here and a “moo-moo” there

Here a “moo” there a “moo”

Everywhere a “moo-moo”

Old Cthulhu had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

Old Cthulhu had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

And on his farm he had a horse, E-I-E-I-O

With a “neigh, neigh” here and a “neigh, neigh” there

Here a “neigh” there a “neigh”

Everywhere a “neigh-neigh”

With a (snort) here and a (snort) there

Here a (snort) there a (snort)

Everywhere a (snort-snort)

With a “moo-moo” here and a “moo-moo” there

Here a “moo” there a “moo”

Everywhere a “moo-moo”

Old Cthulhu had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

The underground thundered with the cheers of the vampires. Their beloved darkness had returned, but peering out upon the world, Franz understood that this was no ordinary darkness. Something was not right about it.

Behind him, Lola stirred.

“What’s happening?” she murmured.

Franz pried himself from the periscope and hurried to her side. “Cthulhu has risen. The darkness has returned.”

Lola smiled weakly. “I’m so happy, Franz. We did it. We saved the planet. Is the baby all right?”

“Yes, the baby is sleeping, here by your . . . legs.”

“What’s wrong, Franz?”

“Are you in pain?”

Lola’s brow furrowed in worry and confusion. “Why, not at all. Should I be?”

“What’s the last thing you remember before blacking out?”

“I recall the baby in my arms and you, reaching for me, pulling me close.”

Unsure how to tell her outright that she was crippled, Franz helped her sit up on the stretcher. Perhaps it was best if she saw for herself.

“Oh, I’m happy to see the baby is fast asleep. So much trauma for a fledgling. We can raise him as our own, can’t we? Or is it a her?” Lola giggled. “I suppose we must confirm a gender before deciding upon a name. If it’s a boy, how do you feel about naming him Forrest? I’ve always been fond of the name, personally.”

Franz realized that Lola was in shock. No state to learn that she was crippled, let alone aid him in plotting an escape from the cell.

Seeing the darkness rolling nearer, Franz felt a panicked urge to escape before whatever was lurking within the black cloud decided to attack.

“Oh dear, where have I misplaced my legs this morning?” Lola said, and then she started to scream.

The baby awakened and matched her screams with a shrill, blood-starving wail, then outdid her by two octaves.

“Give me the baby,” Lola stammered, clawing at the bandages around her leg stumps.

“You’ll bleed to death.”

Lola flashed him the listen or I’ll rip your fucking head off frown, the evil twin of the listen or fuck off smile.

He laid the baby in her arms and watched helplessly as she guided its toothless gums to the burnt and bloody stump of her left leg. The sight of the baby suckling his wife’s gushing wound made Franz sick—and reminded him how hungry he had felt since being awoken by Lola to deal with Lion Man’s death. He couldn’t possibly suck on her stumps, could he?

Disgusted with himself, he turned back to the periscope. What he saw in the darkness made jelly of his knees.

The icy landscape was melting, pulsing, swelling up in gelatinous mounds that resembled hills until they opened up their mandible jaws and lolled their hairy beast tongues in the air.

Hooves and claws sprouted up like trees, giving the place a look of enchanted fairytale woods gone terribly wrong. And though the world itself was now a monster, there also lurked monsters within the monster.

Franz could see them creeping between the limb trees, stalking over the mounds of hair and teeth, flying and crawling and birthing yet more impossible, loathsome things.

The ghouls ate each other. They ate each other and they ate themselves. The earth ate them up as well.

One of the freaks in plainest view of the periscope was among the most shameful and mortifying. It was a bifurcated penis writhing half-hatched from a galleon-sized tumor that encased its scrotum-torso like an egg. The penis monster struggled to break free of the egg-tumor as an army of malformed and diseased ghouls lay siege upon its flaccid necks. The ghouls tore into the wrinkled flesh with rotten teeth and claws. Blood and pus garnished everything in a sickening rust-tinged hue.

“What’s happening out there, honey?” Lola asked.

Franz closed his eyes. He told her there was a war going on.

When he opened his eyes, one of the penises was falling, screaming, crashing to the ice and into the jaws of a nearby earth-mouth. The ghouls were fighting with the remaining penis when two more dickheads sprouted from the gored vacancy created by the first. The ghouls fled too late. The penis hydra spit flaming sperm, leaving the ghouls faceless and blind. The bellies of the ghouls bloated until they popped, spraying guts and bone all slathered in sperm.

The penis hydra stiffened, its three heads raised to the sky, and howled in triumph.

The penis hydra destroyed all enemies.

Unaware of the penis hydra, the vampires rose from the underground, dancing into the new darkness that had befallen the planet. From the expressions on their faces and the way they embraced and high-fived each other, he could tell what they were thinking. They were thinking that a new dark age had arrived, that the storm of light was a brief contact made by the gods of disaster to exterminate the vampires who were too weak or stupid or old to enjoy the decadent bounty of the new dark age.

Behind him, Lola and the baby were crying. Franz wanted to tear himself away from the periscope and comfort them, but the disaster held him rapt, hypnotized.

The penis hydra, the vampires, the mounds of teeth and flesh, the ghouls; all were dwarfed by the hulking green mass of tentacles and beefcake brawn that zipped past and circled the planet twice before hovering in midair above the monstrous parade, like a rocket ship preparing to land on a blighted planet.

The earth quaked when Cthulhu’s feet touched down. Franz clutched the periscope, unable to stand on his own. The stretcher teetered wildly before crashing into the door. The baby slipped out of Lola’s arms. Its head cracked open on the concrete floor. Gray infant brains oozed out in pitiful spurts.

Franz released the periscope and staggered toward the baby. He knelt down beside the limp body and tried to scoop the brains back into the gash, but its brains turned to liquid in his hands.

As the earth settled, he was shaking his head at Lola, who turned away from him and wept.

They relived the same old tragedy once again.

Cradling the dead baby in his arms, a brilliant idea struck Franz.

He ripped off the baby’s legs.

Blasted by yet another wave of brilliance, he removed the baby’s arms.

“Lola,” he called soothingly, “I need you to close your eyes and stretch out flat on your back. I need you to trust me more than ever.”

“Franz,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Yeah?”

“The baby’s dead, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, praying she would not turn around and witness what had become of the baby.

“And I’m bleeding to death, aren’t I?”

“Please, lie down.”

Lola lay down, eyes shut, her body rigid on the cold floor.

“Promise you won’t open your eyes until I tell you to,” Franz said, kneeling in the blood that had already pooled around Lola’s leg stumps.

“I promise.”

With nothing more than an infinite toy box full of love and hope, Franz set to work fitting the baby’s arms into Lola’s stumps. If the baby’s hands would hold the baby’s legs, and all stayed in place just so, Franz believed Lola could be walking again in no time, granted that Cthulhu didn’t blow up the planet first.

Franz helped Lola stand on her new legs. He held her steady as she learned to balance on the tiny baby feet. The precarious hand-knees held steady.

“They’re perfect,” she said.

“I’m glad you like them.”

“Oh, Franz.” Lola threw her arms around his neck.

Franz kissed her on the cheek, then squirmed out of her embrace. “Look, we can’t stay here. Cthulhu has transformed the earth into a teeming horror. The rest of our kind, dumb as they are, went aboveground to greet the new darkness. They’re out there being slaughtered and probably much worse. I imagine they’ll all be dead soon.”

Lola’s response was cut short by a shout outside their cell. They hurried to the door and peered through the bars.

Fang Foot crawled across the stone floor, dragging his large feet behind him like a pair of ball and chains. He reached the barred door and pulled himself up by the bars.

Unlocking the door, he fell backwards, freeing Franz and Lola. They stepped out of the cell and stood over the fallen Council leader, who flailed on his back like a tipped turtle.

“Bessy the milk cow was too dry for cunnilingus that morning,” Fang Foot wailed, in a strange voice they had never heard before, “so I revoked my tongue from her pastry-puffed, shit-crusted pusshole and gouged her eyes with a screwdriver. I hate it, how the hollow-eyed cows will scream, but Bessy was a good cow, owing to the leather medicine ball bondage gag weighing her head to the hay-strewn floor.”

Franz and Lola exchanged nervous glances. Neither of them had any idea what Fang Foot was talking about, nor where he picked up this bizarre, drawling accent.

“He must have gone mad on the battlefield,” Franz said. “This cow he speaks of, it must be the name of a monster out there.”

Fang Foot continued to rant as if Franz had not spoken. “She expelled globules of congealed piss and blood, quivering turds of hair and shit and stomach worms, all streaming out of her pusshole with the canned consistency of a cheese whiz enema. Farmer’s secret between you and me: cows are afraid of going blind. If you’ve got an old cow with a dried-up pusshole, gouge her eyes. She’ll get moist. Just be sure to break her legs first. You don’t want a blind animal running around freely. Somebody might get hurt. Me? I break all my cows’ legs before they get any idea how to use ‘em. Fuckers may as well be born with flippers. Poor Bessy, though. She was really old. I always did have a soft spot for Bessy.”

They edged away, ready to abandon Fang Foot and make a break for it, when three vampires in the scientists’ white uniforms appeared at the end of the hallway.

“There he is!” a scientist shouted.

The three charged down the hall and dogpiled Fang Foot.

Apparently satisfied that Fang Foot would not try to escape, the scientists leapt off him and hastily rolled him into the cell, locking the door with the very key he’d used to free Franz and Lola moments earlier.

Fang Foot was sprawled face-down in a pool of Lola’s blood, gibbering to himself.

“What happened to him?” Lola asked.

The scientists took notice of her and Franz for the first time.

“He’s been possessed by a demon,” one of them said.

“A farming demon,” added another.

“He raped a girl out there,” the third said. “Kept calling her his little sow.”

“Sow?” Franz said. “He, er—the demon—was talking about a cow. Is that one of those monsters outside?”

“A cow is a creature,” one of them said.

“A sow is a baby cow,” added another.

“They were kind of like large chickens,” the third said. “Please don’t mention this to anyone. We would hate for word to get out about cows.”

Franz and Lola nodded acquiescently.

The scientists began talking amongst each other.

“We’re running low on men.”

“Should we recruit this one?”

“What about the woman?”

“Will they go for it? They’re environmentalists.”

“Traitors are the perfect type to send to war.”

“What about sending one and not the other?”

“Check out her legs.”

“She’s as bad off as the ones outside.”

“We’ve got to organize an army.”

“We must do a little reconnaissance first.”

“What are you talking about? We were just outside. Cthulhu has destroyed the planet.”

“His darkness is more evil than ours.”

“So it’s settled.”

“What’s settled?”

“We send the boy and leave the girl.”

Unable to bear listening to the bewildering discussion any longer, Lola interjected. “First off, tell us what you plan on doing with us. Second, what in sea wolf’s name is going on? Who is in control?”

“We’re in control,” declared two of the scientists.

“Fang Foot is unfit to command an army, and the Council has devolved into a bunch of spineless weaklings without him. The battleships are being prepared as we speak.”

“Battleships?” Franz said.

“Yes, ships left over from the days of the sea wolves. We’ve kept them secret from the public, preserved underground as an emergency measure in the event of mass flooding or an extraterrestrial invasion.”

Another scientist picked up the thread. “We’ll send out a team to secure a path to the sea, then we’ll transport the ships out to open waters, where we can most effectively initiate war against Cthulhu’s army of ghouls.”

“Hasn’t the war already begun?” Franz asked.

“Not until we say it has.”

“I saw what’s happening out there.” Franz shook his head, dismayed. “The whole planet has become Cthulhu’s army. We can’t take on the whole planet at once.”

“What we mean by ‘most effective’ is merely the coordinate farthest from Cthulhu. Even in our battleships, we’re too weak to take him head-on.”

“We need to win a few minor battles first.”

“Say, look at his arm,” one of the scientists said, pointing at Franz’s mutant arm.

“I always appreciated the methods he employed with the environmental committee,” another said, “even when his opinions were bogus.”

“That is a mighty arm,” the third said.

The three scientists nodded approvingly.

“Would you like to join our crew? Our battleships will need a strong leader like you,” said one of them.

“Although we’d like to test your mettle, and that beautiful arm, by sending you out with the path clearers first,” said the one who pointed out his mutant arm.

“Show me where to sign up,” Franz said.

“Right this way.”

The scientists motioned for them to leave the prisoners’ quarters together. The three white-coats walked in single-file formation. Franz and Lola remained where they stood.

“Under one condition,” Franz said.

“Make that two,” Lola said.

Franz glanced at her, surprised and confused.

The scientists halted in their tracks.

“I demand total pardon for both of us,” Franz said.

“And I demand to be united with my family,” Lola said.

The scientist last in line turned on his heels and addressed them with a toothy grin on his face. He seemed pleased with their demands. “Of course you’ll be pardoned. And we’ll do everything we can to reunite you with your family. While the gentleman is briefed on his mission, my colleagues here will search the records for your family. We have already amassed a complete database of all known refugees.”

“Does that account for the victims of Cthulhu and his monstrosities?” Franz said.

The scientist’s grin vanished. He turned on his heels and muttered, “Foiled again.”

“Do we have your word that you’ll uphold this agreement?” Lola said.

The scientist spoke without turning to face them. “You are pardoned, yes. We will aid you in your search for your family to the best of our ability. Surely you’ll understand that this latest complication makes it difficult.”

Franz and Lola gave a nod to each other.

“By the way,” the scientist continued, “call me Commander Pink. As of this moment, I have decided I’ll be taking full command of this army. As my first executive decision, I declare that my colleagues here shall henceforth be known as Barthelme and Barthelme, respectively.”

The scientists started down the hall and Lola clutched Franz’s hand, urging him on. Despite her wobbly baby steps, Lola was still a faster walker than Franz. He looked on with amazement at her little baby legs as they hurried hand-in-hand after the scientists. In the midst of all this insanity and trouble, he felt a sense of comfort—and yes, joy—to be with someone as tough and adaptable as Lola. And the ceaseless silent messages, flowing like electric currents from her hand to his, informed him that she felt exactly the same way.

A hamburger champion towered in the distance. Compared to Cthulhu, the hamburger was quite small. In comparison to other hamburgers, many stacked up larger, but regardless of size, this hamburger was a destroyer of them all.

Cthulhu bounded toward the hamburger champion, eager to plunge his tentacles into its many perfect holes of glory and deliciousness.

This was the hamburger he’d been waiting for, the hamburger that would unlock his oldest, most unknowable powers and enable him to wipe out the vampire race in one deft swoop.

He prayed for no pickles.

Sarah burst out of Cyrus’ room when the Lugosi children started to scream. An image of their mother squirming out of the ropes and then torturing the children (before coming for Sarah) haunted her brain. Sarah paused outside the kids’ room. She’d forgotten to grab a weapon. She slid her Ice Chatter out of her pocket and clutched it like a knife. In a pinch, she might be able to bash the mother over the head with it. She slid the Ice Chatter open, deciding to mass text everyone she knew before entering the room. If something happened, they would know where to find her, for Bruno had not come to rescue her.

I am at the Lugosi’s. Please send—

The children screamed for help.

She shut the phone, cancelling the message in progress.

She heard wet sucking sounds from within the room. She shuddered, imagining what those sounds must mean. She held the Ice Chatter above her head, the way people who don’t know how to hold knives always seem to hold knives in movies.

She pushed on the door and held her breath as it slowly creaked open.

The boy and the girl cried her name when they saw her.

The chair where she’d tied the mother sat empty, a coil of ropes heaped around the legs.

The door slammed shut behind Sarah. Mysteriously. Without provocation.

Keeping her eyes on the room and the Ice Chatter poised to strike, she reached behind her and jiggled the door handle. It spun and spun, like the helm of a ship beyond control.

She gave up on the door. She searched for the mother.

“Where is your mother?” she asked the children.

“In the closet,” the boy said between sobs.

“Untie us,” the girl said.

“Let me find your mother. Then I’ll untie you,” Sarah said.

“Please untie us,” the girl said. “The squid will get us.”

Sarah froze. “The squid?”

A tentacle pushed open the closet door from inside, then retreated between two legs hanging out of a soiled nightgown. Sarah followed the legs up to the purple face of the mother. She’d been hung. Another tentacle, wrapped around her neck, held her suspended off the ground.

Sarah dropped the Ice Chatter and retreated for the bedroom door. She banged on the door and tried the handle, which transformed into a slimy tentacle in her grasp.

She stumbled back and fell. The floorboard cracked. Black fluid bubbled up through the splinters.

The children screamed to be untied.

She got up. She untied them. The little boy and the little girl hugged her. She hugged them closer.

Tentacles unpeeled themselves from the wood grain of the walls. More tentacles were born in the darkness of the closet. They fed on the hanged mother’s flesh. They dug into the mother and performed a marionette show.

Sarah searched for her Ice Chatter, but it was lost beneath the wet black muck now pooling around her ankles.

“Hold me close,” she said, as the tentacles in the closet tore their mother apart. “Children, close your eyes.” She closed her eyes as well, pressing her face into the girl’s soft hair.

She felt a tentacle slide across her feet and dared a glance downward. The kids’ room was full of tentacles now.

A tentacle burst out of the toy box and tore a teddy bear in half.

A tentacle fatter than Fang Foot crashed through the window and got stuck.

Sarah had no hope of salvation, and so providing the children with a modicum of comfort felt like the most important thing to her. As long as they had someone to hold on to when the tentacles ripped them limb from limb, maybe death would be a little easier to embrace.

She tried to imagine that the tentacles caressing her were only Bruno’s hands, lathering her body with lotion. She was just starting to accept the fantasy when the roof of the house was torn off by the tentacled hands of a giant squid. Cthulhu, Sarah realized, although she failed to fathom how this could be possible. Anyhow, there existed only seconds between the removal of the roof and the gargantuan head of Cthulhu bearing down on them, as if they were dolls in a little plastic house. The great squid god opened his mouth and inhaled, sucking up Sarah, the children, their dead mother, the Ice Chatter, and all the room’s furniture into a void of foul-smelling nothingness, to be digested at the sluggish velocity of an obese invertebrate’s metabolism.

Cthulhu burped, shuddering at the faint stink of eggs and children on his breath. The hamburger proved not to be a source of insanely evil cosmic power. In fact, it wasn’t even all that desirable.

Feeling sick to his stomach, he summoned his ship of stars to take a brief respite from his quest. Little progress had been made since he set out in search for the greatest hamburger. Every step resulted in disappointment. Perhaps now was the time to reevaluate whether cats on the internet were the most reliable culinary critics. Perhaps what Cthulhu wanted was not a hamburger. I can has cheezburger was cute, but was it backed by the rigorous mind of, say, Schopenhauer’s On the Suffering of Sushi, a work Cthulhu admired most fondly in his youth.

How he missed Schopenhauer.

He was long overdue for a refresher course from his favorite pessimist.

His ship of stars arrived and he climbed on board.

He slunk into his radiant quarters and passed into a deep slumber absent of hamburger nonsense.

Franz was taken to a stone-walled room with Bruno and two other vampires. They were told to put on one of the four light-proof scuba suits hanging in a wardrobe in one corner of the room.

Franz felt disbelieving. He would be venturing out into the horror zone with Bruno and two strangers. This was almost worse than being forced to go alone.

As he put on his scuba suit, struggling to squeeze his mutant arm into its sleeve, he wondered why the scientists invented light-proof scuba suits in the first place, and how these suits were supposed to help them clear a path through a teeming forest of monsters. However, he did not ask questions or protest. He wondered how Lola was faring. She had gone off with Barthelme and Barthelme to search the database for her family.

Commander Pink tapped a quill against the clipboard he was holding while another scientist inspected Franz and the three other vampires in scuba suits.

The scientist gave Commander Pink a thumbs up and exited the room.

Commander Pink began the briefing: “According to the ancient myth passed down from the mad sea wolf Abdul Al-Blahblahblah, Cthulhu is a cosmic warrior who fights for environmental justice throughout the universe. We know from today’s events that he is highly dangerous. However, if we are to conquer this enemy and destroy him, we must treat him as a friend. If you make one wrong move, you will die. Are you with me so far?”

Bruno raised his hand. “What constitutes a wrong move?”

“Anything that gets you killed. Moving on. You are to remain in contact with the underground at all times. Is that clear?”

“So if we get into trouble out there, you’ll come rescue us, right?”

Under better circumstances, Franz would have kindly informed Bruno that they were being sent on a suicide mission.

“Negative,” Commander Pink said. “No backup team is in place. We’re counting on you to be responsible for your own lives. If your mortality comes under duress, please report all useful knowledge via Ice Chat.”

Franz perked up, but one of the other vampires spoke before he could get a word in.

“Is there a profit share on treasures yielded?”

Franz was appalled. They were about to be shoved out into the terrible new darkness alone and this idiot was concerned about a share of the treasure.

“No,” Commander Pink said.

Franz jumped in with his question. “You said we’ll be communicating via Ice Chat. Is there any way I might remain in contact with my wife?”

“The risk of revealing highly classified material renders communication with outsiders impossible.”

Franz gritted his teeth and willed himself to lie. “She suffers from an incurable disease. She could die any moment. If she passed while I was away. . . .”

Commander Pink glared at Franz over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses. “I suppose one outsider won’t compromise the mission.”

“One more question,” Franz said.

Commander Pink ignored him. “Your mission is to clear a path to the sea. We will follow the path you clear with our battleships. Bruno, many of the younger vampires look up to you. Therefore, you will make a good captain. Franz, we scientists have admired your courage and dedication for a long time. We are doubly enamored with your mutant arm. You will also serve as a captain aboard one of our battleships.”

A scientist drenched in liquid rust burst into the debriefing room. “We have an emergency,” she said.

Commander Pink excused himself and followed her into the hall, where they engaged in a heated, whispered conversation. Franz made out part of their discussion. It went like this:

Commander Pink: I don’t believe this. Our drills sensed a full core during the last excavation.

Rust: The previous readings contained an error.

Commander Pink: Our machines are never wrong.

Rust: We have a full crew down there now. The reserves are gone. The core is empty.

Commander Pink: Who could steal so much blood? Is there anything left? A drop? We can run DNA scans.

Rust: I’m afraid there isn’t anything left.

Commander Pink returned to the room. “You had a question?” he said, sounding irritated.

“Where is everyone?” Franz asked.

“You mean the survivors?”

“Yes, the vampires who are still alive.”

“The entrance to the upper ground has been locked, so at this point, one-hundred percent of civilization is underground. We’re holding everyone in cells, identical to the cell you were pardoned from, until we can revise our list of survivors and find out how many were lost in the misguided flight into new darkness.”

Franz bowed his head as Commander Pink wrapped up the briefing.

So not only were the remaining vampires trapped underground. They were being held prisoner until a scientist who had appointed himself commander led them into a hopeless sea battle. Their blood supply had gone missing as well. Perhaps it would be best if Cthulhu destroyed all of them now.

Franz and Lola were reunited briefly before he departed on the path-clearing suicide mission. They stood in a control room, the center of the scientists’ current operations. Computers and other machines lined every wall. Graphs, calculations, code sequences, and streaming footage of the outside world illuminated the faces of the vampires. The overload of pixilated images and streaming data bytes made Franz dizzy. He felt like he was trapped in the belly of a great, cube-shaped whale.

“Any luck finding them?” he asked, resting his chin against Lola’s forehead and closing his eyes to forget the flashing nightmare surrounding him.

“Come home soon,” Lola said, ignoring his inquiry about her family.

Home.

“I’m going to be a captain.”

Lola kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so proud of you.”

“When I return, maybe Commander Pink will give us permission to build a little cottage down here,” Franz said, wondering what his odds of survival were. He’d always dreamed of going out to sea, so there was a little excitement mixed up in all the dread and fear. He was going to be the captain of a battleship, like the sea wolves of olden days. If only his father could see him now.

“I would like that,” Lola said, her voice unsteady.

Fighting back dizziness, Franz opened his eyes.

An isolated tear rolled down Lola’s cheek. Franz licked it away and nuzzled his face into hers.

“To the stairwell!” Commander Pink shouted.

Franz kissed Lola, then hurried off with the three other path clearers, leaving Lola alone with the scientists in the control room. He turned back one last time and watched her shift uneasily on her baby legs. He missed her already.

“I mean, what the hell is fondue anyway?” This he overheard one of the vampire path clearers ask another as they ascended the stairs. The one who asked this was the one who wanted to know about treasure. “You remember the sauce I brought to Wally’s birthday?” the other replied, making it clear that these vampires had some prior acquaintance.

Franz glanced at Bruno. The buff vampire caught his glance and moved closer to Franz. “These guys are total losers. They’re going to be worthless out here,” Bruno whispered. “We’d better stick together.”

This solicitation of camaraderie took Franz by surprise. He’d always suspected that Bruno hated him.

“I always meant to tell you,” Bruno continued, “I really admire what you and what’s-her-face have going.”

“You mean Lola, my wife.”

“Yeah, right. You’re like, all traditional and shit. I may be on the cutting edge of cool myself, but I respect anyone who embraces old stuff. You never know what old stuff will become hip again. Shit, man, like what if you were cool one day.”

“Yeah, what if.” Franz realized that being told he had “cool potential” was probably the biggest compliment Bruno paid anyone, aside from deeming them legitimately cool, although hipsters like Bruno were incapable of openly admitting that anyone else was legitimately cool, because their own coolness would suffer. Regardless, an orange-skinned, bulldog-faced, muscle-bound douche was a good friend to have on a mission like this. Franz’s mutant arm would also prove helpful.

“Dude, check out your arm. You got some mad flex going on. I didn’t know you lifted. That’s pretty rad,” Bruno said, squeezing Franz’s mutant arm.

Franz ignored the compliment. Bruno whipped out an Ice Chatter and tapped at the keys with the desperation of a lover who has not received an expected text message. Franz wondered who Bruno was trying to reach as they exited through the heavy brass doors to the outside world.

The scientists locked the doors behind them. Reluctantly, Bruno tucked away his Ice Chatter. The four of them stood together, uncomfortable in their scuba suits, at the base of the Bat Cave.

Franz turned to meet the hideous world with his own eyes. The sight was more horrific than it appeared through the periscope. Mountains of mutilated teenage vampires rose up and converged with the black sky, which broiled with the insidious flutter of winged, skull-faced moon beasts.

“Get back!” Bruno shouted.

He elbowed Franz out of the way as a fish-faced ghoul lunged for them. The ghoul had been previously wounded. Gnarled ropes of intestine dragged behind it, unfurling from a slit in its belly that opened wider with every step, creating the illusion that the wound was breathing.

Bruno punched the fish ghoul in the face. His fist sank into its rubbery flesh and bounced back, as if he’d punched a trampoline. The fish ghoul snarled and lunged. A claw raked Bruno across the face. He tried to turn away, but the ghoul’s intestines came alive and spun around him, binding Bruno in a tight embrace.

Franz got to his feet and looked around. Hordes of ghouls were shambling near. The other two vampires cowered together, whimpering. Tremors passed through Franz’s mutant arm.

As the fish ghoul lowered its foul green jaws to Bruno’s skull, Franz clutched the ghoul’s head and squeezed. The ghoul hissed. Its fishy eyes bulged, bursting red. Its eyes exploded. The ghoulish head popped and showered Bruno in slime and skull bits. Franz had crushed the fucker, but he had no time to celebrate, for a wave of ghouls attacked at once.

The first ghoul to lash out looked everything like the werewolves of myth and legend, excepting the lobster claws sprouting from its hairy chest. Franz swung his mutant arm like a bat and broke off both claws in one swing. The wolf ghoul burst into flames.

Bruno butted heads with an eight-legged spider ghoul. He seemed to be holding his own, so Franz turned his attention to the horde of waddling squidbirds fanning out to surround them. The squidbirds had penguin bodies that tapered off into obsidian-dark squid heads. Between beaks as hard as stone, they flashed razor teeth sharper than a vampire’s. Franz recalled reading of such ghouls in some mythological text of the Order of the Old Ones, but their proper eldritch name eluded him. So he called them squidbirds.

A squidbird bumbled up to the cowering vampires, latched its tentacles around one of them, and chomped down on his nose. The vampire screamed. By the time Franz punched the squidbird to death, the squidbird had already pecked out both of the vampire’s eyes. He held his hands up to the holes in his face. Blood fountained out and covered his palms. His fondue-making friend whipped out an Ice Chatter and took a photo, then looked at Franz. “How are we supposed to get in touch with the scientists if they didn’t give us their number?”

A squidbird bit into the skull of the vampire before Franz could respond.

Franz’s mutant arm took control of his body. By the time it was all over, the squidbirds and the cowards were dead. Only Franz and Bruno remained. Bruno proffered a high-five and Franz reciprocated.

“Way to kick some ass,” Bruno said.

Franz nodded. He scanned the pulsing, gelatinous snowscape surrounding them. Nothing moved. For the moment, the ghoul attack had abated. He bent over and picked up the bloody Ice Chatter. “How do you suppose the scientists want us to keep in touch?”

“Dial 9-9-9.”

Franz nodded and slid the Ice Chatter into a zippered pouch sewn into the breast of his scuba suit.

“Think we scared off the ghouls?” Bruno asked.

“The whole world is a monster. I don’t think it’s scared of us. It’s just thinking, planning another attack.”

“Fuckin’ A, you called it,” Bruno said, pointing to the sky.

The penis hydra towered above them.

It had grown more heads since Franz spied it through the periscope. The hydra reared back two mushroom-shaped heads in preparation for a semen storm. Instinctually, out of self-preservation, Franz raised his mutant arm above his head to shield himself from the impending wave of flesh-melting semen.

To his surprise and horror, his mutant arm detached from his body and flew through the air in the direction of the penis hydra. His mutant arm took his original arm, his good and natural vampire arm, with it.

“Whoa bro, your arm,” Bruno said.

The penis hydra stamped its feet disgruntledly and focused all of its many heads on the flying arm. Such fixed attention did not prevent the arm from punching the penis hydra in the face, knocking out one bulbous head at a time.

The hydra collapsed, but the mutant arm was not finished yet. The arm burrowed into the tip of the center head.

Franz looked longingly after his vanished arm.

The penis hydra exploded. Crumbs of white birthday cake, not flesh-eating sperm, rained down. By the time the cake settled, Franz and Bruno were covered head to toe in birthday cake.

“That is the coolest thing I have ever seen,” Bruno said.

Franz licked vanilla frosting off his lips. Birthday cake, not monsters, coated everything in all directions, paving the path they had walked and leading to the distant sea.

Beyond the cake, a ghoul took sight of them and charged in their direction. The moment it set foot (or tentacle) upon the birthday cake, the ghoul exploded.

Bruno whistled his approval.

Franz took out the Ice Chatter and dialed 9-9-9.

“Yes?” The call was taken almost instantly. He recognized the voice as that of Barthelme or Barthelme.

“We cleared the path. Follow the birthday cake down to the sea.”

“Right, we’re on it. Is there anything else?”

“Will you give your Ice Chatter to Lola?”

“By anything else, I intend to know details of your crew. Have you acquired vital information? Is anyone injured?”

“Two dead, two in perfect health.” He glanced at his armless shoulder. “Almost perfect health.”

There was silence on the other end as Barthelme or Barthelme put a hand over the speaker. Franz felt anxious. What did the scientist not want him to hear? But when he came back on the line, he merely said, “We’ve tracked your current location. Remain at those coordinates and we’ll have our battleships out shortly. I’m turning the Ice Chatter over to Lola now. Goodbye.”

The line went dead.

Franz was tempted to call back, but resisted. He would try to find a moment to call or text Lola from the battleship.

Bruno was typing into his Ice Chatter again, that same desperate expression on his face.

“Is everything okay?” Franz asked.

“Yeah,” Bruno put the Ice Chatter away and smiled, “I was just texting the Arm Emporium. If we’re going to battle, I want an explosive arm too.”

They laughed together. Franz thought that maybe Bruno was okay after all. He could tell by the worried look in Bruno’s eyes that something was troubling him deeply. Someone he cared for was probably missing. How long would it take to sort out the dead and the missing from those still living?

He inhaled deeply of the birthday air. For all the devastation he’d faced since awaking to Lion Man’s death, this moment, surrounded by a birthday cake wonderland, was not such a bad start to a one-armed life. He hoped Lola wouldn’t mind. Losing a limb certainly offset one’s symmetry, although with her legs missing and his arm gone, they remained a perfect two-piece puzzle.

Cthulhu yawned and stretched his tentacles as he awoke from a most refreshing nap. He felt a newfound sense of confidence and purpose, and thankfully, no longer sick from the most disappointing hamburger.

He descended from his ship of stars, only to discover that a layer of fluffy white cake had blanketed the world.

Was it his birthday already?

Or had he, in dreams, manifested what he needed to destroy the vampires.

Birthday cake, not hamburgers.

“Happy Birthday, old chap,” Cthulhu said to himself, and set the sky on fire, incidentally burning his ship of stars to a crisp.

He could wish for a new one if he wanted, or anything else.

The universe was his candle to wish upon.

What did Cthulhu wish for when he blew out the flaming sky?

That’s a secret we’ll never know.

Burn Girl ate her strawberry milkshake with a spoon. Cyrus drank his chocolate milkshake with a straw.

They sat in a clam booth near the back. Cyrus was exhausted from their walk. He looked around the diner, a renovated coral reef bustling with sea life.

“Where I come from, they teach us that the seas are dead. They claim nothing lives here anymore.”

“The ocean folk prefer keeping to themselves.”

“Is this where the old gods live?”

“Yeah, they’re all here somewhere. If we’d gone to the other diner, the ruined one, we may have seen some of them. They don’t come to this diner. It’s where the commoners go.”

“Commoners?”

“You know, fish and seals and lobsters and stuff. The gods had their own diner. Until Cthulhu destroyed it. Do you want to try my strawberry milkshake?”

Burn Girl slid her glass forward.

Cyrus hesitated.

“I’m not going to set you on fire or anything. I don’t burn that way.”

“Well, duh. We’ve already held hands.”

“Then what’s wrong? This place makes the second best strawberry milkshake in the whole wide sea. Well, I suppose it’s now the best.”

Cyrus hated to admit when he didn’t know something. Openly confessing his own inexperience or unawareness, even concerning a thing he cared nothing for, made him blush. That he was beginning to have feelings for Burn Girl made this even more difficult. But after nearly getting killed by Kayla and Isaac for failing to express his concerns to them, Cyrus was ready to be more open and honest with those around him. So he took a deep breath and confessed, “I’ve never heard of a strawberry milkshake. I don’t know what it is.”

“Oh, of course. I suppose vampires don’t grow strawberries.”

“Can I try?”

Burn Girl smiled. “Please do.”

Cyrus lifted a spoonful of strawberry milkshake to his lips. It had the same texture and consistency as his chocolate milkshake, but tasted much sweeter. The flavor reminded him of the times when he was a little vampire and his father surprised him by going out and buying a box of Cyrus’ favorite blood muffins before anyone in the house awoke. Not that strawberry milkshakes tasted like those blood muffins. No. Strawberry milkshakes tasted like those mornings when you woke up and smelled a surprise waiting for you, secretly harvested while you slept by someone who loved you.

Cyrus took another bite, but this one tasted all scaly and rotten, like a salted dead thing. His face puckered up as he forced himself to swallow the nastiness in his mouth without retching. Where had the magical mornings gone?

“I should have warned you about the fishy parts. You’re probably unfamiliar with the taste of fish. That must be quite a shock,” Burn Girl said. “Strawberries don’t naturally grow underwater, or in arctic climates, but some of the elder gods, starting with Azathoth I think, loved them. They’d tried them on other planets. You know how gods go where they are summoned. Most of them exploit these trips for a little personal vacation time of their own. So Azathoth, at least I think it was Azathoth who first brought tales of strawberries, got the idea to bring back a strawberry plant and modify them, using the dark arts, to grow in these cold seas. And would you believe it, the plan worked.

“The only downside is how the success came about. Azathoth had to splice into the strawberry plant a link from the genetic code of a calcifer, the warmest jellyfish in the ocean. The calcifer genes enabled the strawberry plants to not freeze. Within the span of a few decades, a strawberry craze took hold. All the elder gods wanted was strawberry this or strawberry that. And they planted them everywhere. In coral reefs and clams, seaweed beds and once inside the belly of a whale. The downside of these strawberries is that they taste a little fishy. Most gods don’t mind because they subsist primarily on sushi diets anyway.

“Personally, I’m not a fan of fishy things. Lucky for me, I know the secret of picking the sweet parts out of strawberry milkshakes and leaving the gross parts behind.”

“How do you do it?”

“Alchemy. Anyway, I thought vampires were supposed to feed only on blood. Are you special?”

Cyrus took a long sip from his chocolate milkshake to mask the fishy taste lingering in his mouth.

“We receive most of our nutrients from blood, but we eat and drink other things as well, if only for pleasure. Some vampires belonging to the generations coming up after me don’t even like the taste of blood, but they still have to consume it. Without blood, they’ll die.”

“How awful. Imagine hating the very thing that keeps you alive.”

“I think they’re just picky eaters who will grow out of it.”

“But what if vampires are evolving? What if in a few thousand years, none of you can stand the taste of blood?”

“I suppose we’ll have to face our troubles as they come. Right now, Cthulhu is probably destroying the planet.”

Burn Girl took the last bite of her strawberry milkshake with a somber expression. Cyrus could not tell if she was sad because her milkshake was gone, or because Cthulhu was destroying the planet.

“I’m sorry for dragging you along with me,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m having a wonderful time.”

She hung her head and cried. “I’m not strong enough to fight Cthulhu on my own.”

Cyrus slid over into the seat beside Burn Girl and put a comforting arm around her. “Who said you’ll be fighting Cthulhu by yourself? I’ll be right there by your side.”

Burn Girl raised her head. “You will? You mean you weren’t kidding earlier?”

“Of course I wasn’t kidding. Now let’s go kick some squid god ass.”

Burn Girl kissed Cyrus on the cheek.

This, he imagined, might be something worth dying for.

She slid out of the booth and reached into her flaming belly. She pulled out a pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling.

The typical diner choreography stopped dead. A fork and knife clattered onto a plate, dropped from the flippers of a tiny whale.

“This is a stickup,” Burn Girl said. “I want to talk to the manager.”

“That would be me,” a seahorse stammered.

Burn Girl pointed the gun at the seahorse. “How many pickles do you have in this joint?”

“We keep an entire storeroom of pickles. They’re our specialty,” the seahorse said.

“I want a team assembled to haul every last pickle ashore. Do you understand?”

The seahorse began to protest.

Burn Girl clicked back the chamber. “I asked if you understood me. I’m not asking twice.”

“Yes.”

Burn Girl shot the seahorse anyway. She turned and addressed the other sea animals in the diner. “Let that be a warning to everyone. I don’t give second chances. Now form a single-file line and prepare to work your tails off. We’ve got pickles to haul!” She turned and said to Cyrus, “Find the pickle storeroom and start dispensing barrels.”

Cyrus wanted to ask what she wanted with so many pickles, let alone how some of the smaller creatures—the ghost shrimp and anemones, for example—could be expected to haul entire pickle barrels ashore, but the gun in her hands and her warning about second chances stripped him of any desire to ask questions. Let the ghost shrimp and anemones figure it out for themselves.

A fish waitress showed Cyrus to the pickle storeroom, which was a vast warehouse that appeared, through some illusion or trick of light, to be larger than the diner itself.

After failing to budge a single pickle barrel, Cyrus decided to call the sea animals into the storeroom one at a time. They could pick up their own damn barrels. They shuffled, crawled, or swam in and out while Burn Girl barked orders at those still waiting in line.

Cyrus wondered what happened to the cute girl who had asked him to accompany her for a milkshake. Burn Girl was acting as cruel and demanding as Kayla at her worst—and she’d killed a seahorse! Perhaps love was always like this. Summoning eldritch gods, thieving diners of their pickles; the same submissive bullshit act.

He gave pickles to the animals.

Burn Girl yelled.

He gave pickles to the animals.

Burn Girl shot a porpoise.

He gave pickles to the animals.

He gave pickles.

He gave pickles.

What could Burn Girl possibly want with so many pickles?

Lola, it’s Franz. We made it safely out to sea. Is everything alright?

My family is gone.

Gone?

Dead. Gone. I don’t know.

I’m so sorry.

I need you here, Franz.

I will be there soon.

The S.S. Kadath, moving slowly with only one sparsely manned tier of oars, soon hovered into sight between the icy cliffs known as Sodom and Gomorrah, where swam the most fetid horde of Cthulhu’s monstrous army.

Lola, the sea is beautiful. We’re surrounded by monsters and it’s still beautiful.

Be safe, Franz.

By this time Commander Pink, with the aid of Franz and Bruno, had divided the vampires into three parties: two to fight a naval battle aboard the S.S. Kadath, under Franz’s helm, and its sister ship, the S.S. Dream Quest, led by Commander Pink, while a third party remained ashore to ensure that the Dream Quest and the Kadath would not be instantly overtaken by sea monsters. Seeing that death was not imminent, the third party, commanded by Bruno, boarded the anchored ship S.S. Acker and towed out to meet the other ships, which sped through the strait to attack the monsters crawling amidst the outcropping sea cliffs.

The frightful detachments of the moon beasts and shambling things had lumbered up to the top of the headlands and were shockingly silhouetted on either side against the grey twilight sky. The thin hellish flutes of the ghouls had now begun to whine, and the general effect of those hybrid, half-amorphous processions was as nauseating as the actual odor given off by the toad-like lunar blasphemies.

The monsters are playing music, Lola. It’s horrible.

Then the two parties of the ghouls swarmed into sight and joined the silhouetted panorama. Javelins began to fly from both sides, and the swelling meeps of the ghouls and the bestial howls of the shambling things gradually joined the hellish whine of the flutes to form a frantic and indescribable chaos of demon cacophony.

Their song will drive me mad!

Now and then bodies fell from the narrow ridges of the headlands into the sea, in the latter case being sucked quickly under by certain submarine lurkers whose presence was indicated only by prodigious bubbles. Meanwhile, Franz texted Lola.

A ghoul nearly climbed aboard! It tried to steal my Ice Chatter when I pushed it over.

I’m so afraid. Please don’t die.

I won’t die. Our battleships are equipped with cannons.

Is Cthulhu around?

No sign of him anywhere.

For half an hour the battle raged, and Franz continued texting, until upon the west cliff the monsters were completely annihilated. They were slowly retreating to the slopes of an iceberg.

We’re winning! I think we’ve won the battle.

Commander Pink ordered reinforcements from the party in the town to help seal the victory. The last of the toad-like horrors fought desperately with great spears clutched in their powerful and disgusting paws.

Vampires leapt onto the ships of the monsters. The fight became a hand-to-hand contest. Franz remained aboard his battleship, crouched by the stern, texting.

As fury and recklessness increased, the number falling into the sea became very great. Those striking the harbor met nameless extinction from the unseen monsters beneath the surface, but of those striking the open sea some were able to swim to the foot of the cliffs and land on tidal rocks, while the few winged ghouls swooped down and rescued several moon beasts. The cliffs were unscalable except when the monsters had debarked, so that none of the ghouls on the rocks could rejoin their battle line. The rest were killed by cannon fire.

Several ghouls swarmed over the helm and Franz had to put the Ice Chatter away. He picked up a harpoon and blasted the center ghoul in the heart. The ghoul remained standing, tugging at the large treble hook embedded in its chest bone. Franz ran a wide circle around the ghouls while they were still crowded together. He tied them together with the razor-wire rope attached to the harpoon. When they were securely tied, he jerked hard on the harpoon gun and sliced their fishy heads off.

He called on two vampires and they helped him pitch the heads overboard. They left the heap of bodies twitching.

Finally, the moon beasts and the ghouls being safely in the distance and the invading land army concentrated in one place, Franz took out the Ice Chatter and texted Lola again:

Do you remember the first time we talked on Ice Chat?

Yes.

I told you that if I could just go out to sea, like a sea wolf, I’d die a happy vampire.

You were so romantic.

Well here I am at sea, but the sea is not the reason I would die the happiest vampire of all, if I died right now.

No?

You are the reason, Lola.

Oh Franz. You shouldn’t be texting right now. It’s dangerous.

I love you.

Return home safely.

He put the Ice Chatter away, wondering if losing an arm forfeited a safe return.

Just then, Commander Pink pulled alongside Franz and the S.S. Acker. Commander Pink waved and urged them forward for an aggressive assault, for the monsters had begun to rally.

They landed a considerable force in the enemy’s rear, after which the fight was short-lived. Attacked from both sides, the ghouls were rapidly cut to pieces or pushed into the sea, until by evening Commander Pink agreed that the area was clear of them.

When the security of the first two ships was assured, Bruno’s galley sallied forth and rescued such vampires as were on the rocks or swimming in the ocean after being forced off enemy ships.

So by night Commander Pink assembled all the vampires and counted them with care, finding that over a fourth had been lost in the day’s battles. The wounded were placed on bunks in the galley, for Bruno, of all vampires, discouraged the old ghoulish custom of killing and eating one’s own wounded, and the able-bodied troops were assigned to the oars or to such other places as they might most usefully fill. Under the low phosphorescent clouds of night the galley sailed, and Franz was not sorry to be departing back to the underground.

Goodnight, he texted Lola before passing into a deep slumber, lulled by the rocking of the waves.

When he awoke in the morning, he found the ship very close to shore, where a few vampire sentries still waited, squatting in the birthday cake like gargoyles.

He got up and searched for Bruno, but the buff vampire was nowhere to be found. Someone aboard the S.S. Acker reported that Bruno fell into the sea during the night and had presumably drowned.

Franz went straight away to Commander Pink and reported the tragic news, but the commander had other things on his mind.

“I am thinking of a great design,” he told Franz as they took to land and began the march back to the underground. “If it fails, I fear we are doomed despite this great victory.”

“Do you care to confide?”

“I want to build a giant vampire.”

“Out of what, may I ask?”

“Out of vampires, of course.”

“And for what purpose?”

“To take on someone our own size.”

The lunacy of Commander Pink’s plan was only matched by the lunacy in his eyes, but the vision of a giant vampire rising from the underground and uniting the vampires as they had not been united in fathomless centuries was also brilliant. Franz worried that he may have been infected by Commander Pink’s lunacy. He shrugged away the notion. They had won the battle at sea, but at the expense of a quarter of their men. Winning petty squabbles would still lose them the war. They had the bravery and the spirit. Now they needed the triumphant, all-encompassing victory, and that meant risking everything in a head-on confrontation with Cthulhu. That meant beginning construction immediately.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” Cthulhu said to the I Can Has Cheezburger animated .gif cat on the screen of his Ice Chatter. “I thought we could work through our differences. We even spent some time apart. I realize now that we’re just two completely different people.”

“Meow?”

“Of course you were good to me, Lolcat. It’s just, you’re a cat and I’m a totally sinister god. We were never meant to last.”

“Meow?”

“I know we had good times together. Great times. Nobody can take those memories from us. But these past few eons, I feel we’ve been holding each other back.”

“Meow?”

“I know I was sleeping all that time, but that’s precisely my point. I was only dreaming because I was unhappy in our relationship.”

“Meow?”

“I know you can has cheezburgers, Lolcat. The truth is, I can’t. I still feel a twinge of guilt every time I spell ‘cheeseburger’ with a z, and that’s not even the half of it.”

“Meow?”

“Lolcat, please. Don’t blame this on our problems in bed. I’ve imagined for so many years that if only I experienced perfection in a hamburger, I would have everything made. Do you know what I learned today?”

“Meow?”

“No, not that I should undergo species reassignment surgery and become a cat. I learned that hamburgers are impossible. For me they are, anyway. I don’t have a burger spot, Lolcat. I’m a sushi man at heart.”

“Meow?”

“You’ll find your perfect mate someday. There are plenty of hamburger lovers in the sea. I have to go now. I’ve got a dinner date with my old flame.”

“Meow?”

“Yes, Lolcat. I’m going out with sushi.”

“Meow?”

“I know. It happened fast, but you can’t control these things. For so long I forgot how much I love to eat sushi. Now that we’ve been reacquainted, I understand the mistake I made in ever saying goodbye to sushi.”

“Meow?”

“That’s not to say I never loved you, only that I must go.”

With a lone tear in his left eye, Cthulhu tossed the Ice Chatter into the sea. “Let’s go,” he said to the salmon roll that had been standing behind him, and tried to ignore the electric mewls of the Lolcats as they sank to the bottom.

Bruno muscled his way onto the mussel-strewn shore of Muscle Island. Thanks to his bivalve friends, Muscle Island appeared as nothing more than a small rocky island, but within each of their clamped shells, the brute joy and manly wonder of Muscle Island waited to be unleashed. For many seasons, Bruno had anticipated springing the crowning achievement of his life’s work on the vampires, and although the project had yet to reach maximum buff capacity, the opportunity dawning before him might never come again. He would activate Muscle Island, kick Cthulhu’s ass, and save the vampires from extinction. He would be everybody’s hero, their god, but most importantly, their personal trainer.

Bruno lay sprawled on his back, exhausted. After falling off the S.S. Acker, he’d nearly drowned twice on his treacherous swim toward Muscle Island. He checked his Ice Chatter for incoming messages from Sarah. He’d received no word from her in quite some time. Before saving the vampires, he intended to stop by the Lugosi’s and rescue Sarah.

He loved Sarah, but he couldn’t muster the courage to tell her because legally, she was still married to Fang Foot. Between sucking a girl’s blood and confessing your love for her, you had to draw the line somewhere. He felt bad about the whole affair.

He got to his feet and began cracking open the mussels, which sighed wearily as their jaws drew back and revealed the muscles within. Bruno plucked the muscles from within the mussels and tried not to think about Sarah as he worked. He imagined himself to be a giant manta ray trying to make ketchup out of a field of tomato plants.

When he came to the last mussel, he paused from his work to look up at the sky, and there above him floated a bright big beautiful arm, large as a galleon. The arm was made of pure muscle.

Bruno pulled the batch of muscles from the last mussel and raised them to the arm above. The arm descended, fingers extended to accept the final muscles, its fingernails.

Buff fingernails, Bruno thought, nodding.

The arm came down lower and Bruno hopped onto its wrist, straddling it like a horse. He thought about that funny arm emporium joke he made to Franz, who he hoped to see again and maybe become friends with, even though that guy was sort of a dork.

Right now, he had a woman to save.

He held on tight to the muscular giant arm and shouted, “Mush!”

The arm took off into the sky.

To hell with waiting for love. As soon as he held Sarah in his arms, he was going to lay her down and make love to her, chewing on her face until she wept.

Or maybe a simple “I love you” would suffice.

After Commander Pink gathered everyone together and described what he wanted, the vampires began nailing nails into their arms and legs and hearts and hands. They nailed themselves to other vampires, but something wasn’t quite adding up. For all the holes they had created and all the precious blood they had spilled, they weren’t getting any closer to the formation of a giant vampire.

“Perhaps we should bring in a scaffold,” Barthelme suggested.

“The vampires may prove stackable,” Barthelme agreed.

Commander Pink put his arms around Franz and Lola’s shoulders and said, “Perhaps we ought to go have a chat with Fang Foot. I think what we’re missing here is our big toe.”

In the cell where Franz and Lola had been kept, Commander Pink explained their plan to Fang Foot, who looked very meek, sprawled on the floor of his cell. He was apparently no longer possessed by the farming demon.

“I will absolutely not be somebody’s toe,” Fang Foot said after hearing the breakdown. “Toes, in fact the entire thing we call a foot, belong to the body’s lowest class. I am head of the Council. I belong in the head.”

“The Council has dissolved,” Franz said, because someone needed to break the news to him. “You are no longer in charge. Anyway, this isn’t about pride. It’s greater than any individual. It’s about who fills each role best. You may have been head of the Council for many years, Fang Foot, but in your heart you’re just a big toe. And the big toe is where you’re needed.”

“If I’m in the big toe, who will lead us in battle?”

“The body has no dictators. Everyone is a leader. The construct is too complex to be governed by a solitary ruler.”

“What about the head? It’s the head that rules.”

“I will be stationed in the head alongside Lola and Commander Pink.”

“Traitors!”

Barthelme and Barthelme appeared behind them.

“What is it?” Commander Pink asked.

“Some vampires are rebelling, sir,” Barthelme said.

“They’ve gone mad from lack of blood,” Barthelme said.

“Actually, it’s the nails that are upsetting them,” Barthelme corrected.

“True, they do not favor putting nails through their flesh,” Barthelme nodded, “although they are quite starving.”

“Move forward with the construction of the giant vampire,” Commander Pink said. “At all costs. Tell them too bad.”

“We fear rebellion,” said Barthelme and Barthelme.

“Wait, I’ve got it,” Franz stepped forward. “I know just the thing to calm them down and put a little blood back into their systems.”

They all looked at him expectantly.

“Your legs, Lola. Your baby legs are the key.”

When nobody responded, Franz waved his hand dismissively and told them to fetch him a pair of bone saws, or the next best thing available. He added, “And set up two of these prison cells for surgery. When Lola and I are ready, line up the starving and send them in two at a time.”

“Ready for what?” Lola asked.

“It’s time to play doctor and lunch lady.”

“Oh, Franz. I missed you.”

Franz stepped forward and enfolded Lola in his arms. He kissed the tip of her nose and sighed contentedly. Since his return from the sea battle, he and Lola had not found a free moment to embrace. There was far too much work to be done. Someday, in a faraway future where Cthulhu was not threatening to destroy their planet, they would have all the time in the world.

“I love you,” Lola said, nuzzling into Franz’s neck.

Barthelme and Barthelme returned with an axe and a chainsaw, putting a halt to their intimate moment.

Franz took the axe and Lola took the chainsaw. She eyed Franz skeptically.

“Now start calling them in,” Franz said. His voice was cold and emotionless. There was a distant look in his eyes.

Barthelme and Barthelme left the cell and soon returned with the first blood-starving vampire held between them.

“Strap him to the table,” Franz said.

Barthelme and Barthelme strapped the vampire, who was too weak to protest, to the table on which Lola had earlier been wheeled into the cell.

“You want blood?” Franz asked the vampire.

The vampire offered a slow nod.

“You remove the legs and I’ll remove the arms,” Franz said to Lola. He turned and addressed Barthelme and Barthelme. “One of you should feed the blood from each limb back to the vampire. The other of you, collect the drained limbs in two piles. Got it?”

They nodded.

“Then let the operation begin.”

Franz wielded his axe in his remaining hand. Lola revved her chainsaw.

They cut the vampire up and Barthelme fed the blood back into the vampire, then handed the drained limbs off to Barthelme, who separated the arms and the legs into two separate piles. When the piles started filling up the room, Barthelme and Barthelme called for backup.

Two scientists entered the cell with wheelbarrows, in which they piled the limbs, and so added to the chain of operations. The legs would be used to construct the legs of the giant vampire. The arms would be used to construct the giant arms. The torsos of the limbless vampires were to be used for the main body and also the head. Nobody struggled as they were chopped apart. They were too weak to protest. No uprising.

After Franz and Lola severed the limbs of the last vampire, Barthelme and Barthelme dragged Fang Foot out of the cell. They’d left him there because they felt cruel.

Franz and Lola dropped their weapons and shuffled, exhausted and bloody, out into the main cavern of the underground. The giant vampire was complete, except for one big toe. Barthelme and Barthelme slid Fang Foot into place and there it was, magnificent in all its glory. Commander Pink leaned out of the giant vampire’s left eye socket and waved to them. “Come on up,” Commander Pink called. “The view is wonderful up here.”

They were deep underground and so there could be no possible view, technically speaking, but Franz and Lola agreed. Lola spread her batwings and began to flap.

“This is a lot different than jumping out of a window. Are you sure you can handle it?” Franz asked.

Lola took him by the hand and lifted them into the air. They flew to their commanding station, where the view was beautiful indeed.

The giant vampire stepped out of the underground and into the blackness of the dispossessed world. Franz and Lola sat behind the eye sockets of the vampire alongside Commander Pink. Franz felt claustrophobic in the hot and tiny operating room. The walls breathed in and out, in and out. The stale exhalations of vampire faces nailed together to form the walls and ceiling and the floor was suffocating.

The top of the giant vampire’s head nearly touched the stars. From this vantage, Franz thought the black planet looked peaceful, the type of place you might want to build a little house and raise a few vampires. He realized that Fang Foot and the other vampires making up the giant feet were probably not faring so well. The lowest rungs on the ladder were always the ones to get thrown to the monsters.

“Come on you bastard, show yourself,” Commander Pink muttered, guiding the giant vampire forward by pulling on certain of the strings that zigzagged like a spider’s web around him.

Franz took Lola’s hand. They stole a glance at one another before Commander Pink reminded them to keep their eyes on the outside world.

A glow appeared on the horizon, and slowly revealed itself to be a ship of stars. The ship floated in the air, high above the head of the giant vampire.

“Cthulhu must be near,” Commander Pink said.

“Should we destroy his ship?” Lola asked.

Before Franz or Commander Pink could respond, the giant vampire struck an invisible wall in the darkness. The vampire wobbled, dazed from the impact. Commander Pink jerked frantically at the strings to keep the giant vampire upright. A fall from this height might ruin them before the battle had even begun.

When they regained balance, each individual vampire that made up the giant vampire exhaled a gasp. The invisible object took visible form as a writhing mass of tentacles.

The giant vampire’s head tilted up. Franz squinted into the darkness, straining to see where the tentacles led. They were the tips of Cthulhu’s beard, he realized.

The tentacles swayed. Behind them, he made out two legs decked out in striped green and yellow spandex. Each leg was as tall as the giant vampire.

One leg swung back as if preparing for a punt.

Franz, Lola, and even Commander Pink screamed. Their screams went up with a thousand others. This was the end of the vampire race.

Why, in their final hour, was everyone so weak?

Franz squeezed Lola’s hand until her fingers crunched. She squeezed back. He welcomed the pain, waiting for the death kick to come, wondering what would come next.

He waited, but the death kick never came.

Eventually, he and Lola and Commander Pink opened their eyes. He imagined all the other vampires opening their eyes at the same time, blinking confusedly and then in fright, for they now stood face to face with Cthulhu. The eldritch horror had not brought his foot back to kick them, but to take a knee, for when he crouched down on one knee, his face was at the level of theirs.

Face to face: the vampire and the squid.

“You seek a fight,” Cthulhu said.

The giant vampire nodded.

“Then we shall fight in the way of the gods.”

Commander Pink turned to Franz and Lola. “Okay, this is where I need you. How did the elders fight in the Order of the Old Ones?”

“Gaul was pretty secretive about their battles,” Lola said. “Until the night he died. He told us how he defeated Fang Foot in a necromancy duel.”

“That’s not going to help us now,” Franz said.

“Why not?” Lola looked annoyed.

Franz gestured in front of them. The ship of stars had materialized between Cthulhu and them. The ship was no longer a ship. It had transformed into a table of stars, upon which lay platters stacked high with food.

“Sushi,” Cthulhu said, “to the death.”

Commander Pink pulled the strings controlling the giant vampire’s jaw and made it speak like a ventriloquist controlling his dummy. “You mean we’re having an eating contest . . . to the death?”

Cthulhu nodded.

“I want to ask him a question,” Franz said.

Commander Pink handed the jaw strings to him.

Franz pulled the strings, forcing some awkward gibberish out of the giant vampire’s mouth before he got the hang of it.

The giant vampire said, “This is Saint Caution speaking. I suspect you know that my wife and I are the ones who summoned you. We were told that you were a superhero. We were told that you could save the planet. All you’ve done is destroy it. I want to know why. I want to know if there’s anything we can do that will convince you to return to the eldritch pit of nothingness from which you came.”

Cthulhu let out a mighty, evil laugh. He slammed a squiddy fist against the table of stars, rattling the gargantuan sushi platters. “Fools,” he bellowed, “I saved this planet from you. Vampires are a disease. Now we shall play my favorite war game. If you defeat me, I will return to the seas and you may begin your loathsome civilization anew. Sushi to the death begins!”

Before the death game could properly begin, a giant arm rose out of the sea and punched Cthulhu in the face.

When Bruno arrived at the location of the Lugosi’s house, the house was no longer standing. He experienced unbearable heartbreak and rage, at Cthulhu but also at himself. He never told Sarah that he loved her. He should have done so when he had the chance. He bit his tongue to stave off tears because only cowards cry. He cried anyway. He loved her.

He raised his giant arm into the air and sped off. He no longer cared if he lived or died. Only revenge mattered. First against Cthulhu, then against himself.

Speeding through the blackness, he spotted the megalithic squid god squaring off with a giant vampire. His initial thought was that Cthulhu had brought a friend along, but as he came nearer, he realized the giant vampire was made of other vampires. Despite his loss, he had to grin at the ingenuity of his fellow vampires.

The giant arm closed its hand into a fist, ready to punch Cthulhu back to R’lyeh.

But before Bruno had an opportunity to avenge his lover’s death, he was smashed into oblivion.

Bruno flailed as tatters of his giant arm fell around him. Cthulhu had destroyed his vessel with a single punch. He reached out for the ruined shards of muscle raining down, but it was pointless. He was falling and so were his dreams. Every bone in his body would break when he hit the ground. He thought of Sarah. He loved her now, when his life was over, more than ever. Was it always like this? He was clutched by a sickening fear made worse by a regret that he hadn’t lived and loved better, that in the end Muscle Island was a failure. Nothing hurt more than the death of an ideal, not even the ground when you fell from the sky and broke all your bones and became a big black nothing. At least then you still retained some hope as you fell. Bruno had two great hopes in the world, Muscle Island and Sarah. Both were dead. And then so was he. How he felt so much better being nothing, but there was all that losing everything he had to go through to get there. If he could have lived it all over, he would have dropped the cool act and just married the girl. They’d live happily ever after on Muscle Island, or maybe just happily, in some one room apartment.

“Oh my sea wolf! He killed Bruno!” Franz shouted.

“There’s no time to mourn,” Commander Pink said. “We’ve got a sushi battle to win. Look, it’s already begun.”

Cthulhu picked up an orca roll (a whole orca whale sliced and displayed over rice filled with salmon roe and carrot). He dipped a tentacle in wasabi and painted a green line down the orca’s back. If anyone were around to measure the quantity of wasabi on this single sushi roll, they would have totaled a sum of three gallons . . . and realized why Cthulhu was so insane.

Cthulhu swallowed the orca roll in a single bite.

The vampires, who had never eaten sushi, picked up an orca roll from the table of stars and spread an identical line of wasabi across the sliced orca’s back.

As the vampires that made up the giant vampire’s left arm raised the sushi roll to the massive mouth, Franz wondered what the green stuff was, and if it was potentially harmful, or some sort of trick on Cthulhu’s part.

The giant vampire took in the whole roll, just as Cthulhu had done.

And immediately regretted it.

The vampire that made up the giant nose exploded, splattering vampire blood all across the table of stars.

The greatest effect was seen on Commander Pink, for he controlled the strings that governed their collective body.

Commander Pink coughed and sputtered as his face turned red. His nose began to bleed. His eyes bugged out and his face elongated until he held the visage of a horse and whinnied loudly.

His knees buckled and he dropped the strings and vomited between his knees. Without a controller, the giant vampire slumped over. Franz pushed the sick commander aside and seized control of the ropes, raising up the heavy head of many from the starry table.

Franz and Lola led the giant vampire in a valiant sushi effort. They picked up a method of using the many mouths of the vampires to eat a plethora of sushi. The more sushi they fed the mouths, the bigger the vampire grew.

Finally, Cthulhu got frustrated. He knocked the table of stars aside and punched the giant vampire in the face.

The giant vampire sailed into the sky.

Burn Girl and Cyrus came ashore.

Burn Girl apologized for her unladylike behavior in the diner.

Burn Girl and Cyrus built a cannon out of the barrels.

Burn Girl and Cyrus got a bunch of lobsters to haul the pickle cannon on their backs to the location of a battle in the distance.

Some ghouls approached them.

Burn Girl said, “Boo,” and frightened them away.

The view from outer space was like a painting by Franz’s father.

The giant vampire slowed in its ascension and plummeted back to the planet.

Crashed into the ground.

Cthulhu planted a foot on the vampire’s back and roared triumphantly. Tentacles began creeping into the vampire, eating some of its people parts and crushing others, or sucking their heads off. It was a slow, painful death.

Before Cthulhu could destroy the entire giant vampire, a flame appeared on the ice. Franz saw it. And the little flame was running side by side with Lola’s younger brother, Cyrus. They were shooting at Cthulhu.

Shooting pickles.

Cthulhu’s hatred for pickles distracted him from the giant vampire, which gave Franz and Lola enough time to recover and raise up the body they commanded.

They sucker punched Cthulhu, who stomped his great squid feet.

The giant vampire grabbed hold of Cthulhu’s cape and flipped the cape over his tentacled face. While Cthulhu struggled to tear the cape from his eyes, Franz jerked madly at the strings, and the giant vampire leaned in close, bit Cthulhu on the neck, and sucked his blood. Franz and Lola and all the rest felt replenished for the first time in ages.

Cthulhu collapsed mightily to the earth. The giant vampire cheered. They had defeated the eldritch eco-warrior!

No.

Cthulhu was not dead. He laughed a very evil, sinister laugh.

And then the squid god exploded.

Burn Girl jumped up and down in celebration of the death of Cthulhu. She turned to give Cyrus a big hug, but Cyrus had been incinerated in the explosion of the god. The pickle cannon had turned to ash too. The giant vampire was in a million little pieces. Burn Girl doubted that anyone survived the blast. That was Cthulhu’s kamikaze mode. A little bit sad, Burn Girl turned back toward the sea. As she shuffled along the shore, she made a decision to open her own lonely diner. Even if there were rarely any customers, she’d be glad to warm the lonesome hearts of those weary travelers who found her diner. It would be a place where all the lonely could gather, a place she could finally call home.

Franz and Lola awoke in the ruins of their vampire comrades. It seemed everyone else had been torn apart by the blast. Lola’s baby legs were missing. Franz offered to find some good matching legs among the bodies.

“I don’t mind being legless, really,” she insisted. “I would rather be legless than walk around on someone else’s legs.”

The darkness had settled back to normal, pre-sunlight, pre-Cthulhu conditions. The sea and the ice were red as far as they could see. All the bloodshed and evil-dwelling had reverted the planet back to how it used to be.

“I’m so sorry,” Franz said.

“I told you, I’m okay legless.”

“No, for your family. We never found them. They must be—”

Lola silenced Franz by putting a finger over his lips.

“Our families are gone but we still have each other. I will miss them so much, but I’ll remember them for as long as I live. Vampires were never meant to live forever. Someday we’ll die too. I accept that. In the meantime, you are all the family I need.”

“I love you, Lola.”

Franz lifted Lola and pulled her close to him.

Cradling her in his arms, he stumbled over to Cthulhu’s gargantuan, hollowed-out corpse. Death had a curious effect on Cthulhu. His mouth hung open like a doorway. It was encrusted with emeralds.

Franz stepped inside, carrying Lola like a delicate vase. They found themselves in a cavernous house of twinkling stars. It needed some cleaning up, of course, but they would manage.

Over the next few hundred years, they would build a graveyard and properly bury all the dead. For now, they needed a coffin of their own to sleep in. They were very tired. As luck would have it, they found one. Cthulhu must have swallowed a house in his recent reign of terror.

They climbed inside the coffin and closed the lid and cuddled close together. Before falling into a deep and hopeful sleep, they exchanged some parting words.

“Franz?”

“Yes?”

“Can we try again?”

Cameron Pierce is the author of six other books, the most recent being the island horror novella Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island. His fiction and poetry has appeared in many publications in print and on the internet, including The Barcelona Review, The Nervous Breakdown, The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple), Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, The Dream People, The Horror Library Vol. II, Nemonymous, Warmed and Bound, Christmas on Crack, Nouns of Assemblage, Bare Bone, Smalldoggies Magazine, Everyday Genius, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, and Verbicide. He is also the editor of Lazy Fascist Press. Cameron lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, author Kirsten Alene.