Robbery Gone Wrong
30 Jul 2019Today’s prompt: “You are a customer lying face down on the floor during a bank robbery. Describe the robbery from this vantage point.”
Sloppy. Lots and lots of stray bullets.
Today’s prompt: “You are a customer lying face down on the floor during a bank robbery. Describe the robbery from this vantage point.”
Sloppy. Lots and lots of stray bullets.
Today’s prompt: “Describe one physical change you would make to yourself if you could and how this would change your life.”
If I were you, I would go with “not having the venom of a thousand cobras coursing through my veins.”
Today’s prompt: “Rewrite your college application essay from today’s point of view, answering the last question: ‘Is there anything else we should know?’”
#4. Is there anything else we should know?
In question #1, you answered the prompt, “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?” Back when you were first applying to college, you wrote about the time the transmission went out on your 1993 Kia Sephia, and your family couldn’t afford to fix it right away. Your parents’ work schedules didn’t allow for them to take you to and from school and your part time job. You bummed rides from friends and flipped burgers until you’d saved up enough money for the repairs. You think you said something about empathizing with families who were even less well off than yours, who couldn’t afford to buy their high school kids a car, however shitty that car might be.
Today, your obstacle is Cxaxukluth, spawn of Azathoth, a bubbling protoplasm of an Outer God. It filled your lungs with a blob of ooze. You learned that not all obstacles can be overcome.
Back in question #2, you responded to the topic, “Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?” At the time, you talked about the crisis of faith you had when your favorite uncle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. How you wrestled with the classic “Why do bad things happen to good people?” question that has plagued philosophers for ages. You concluded by saying that you’d found some solace in your church, but that you were still occasionally riddled by doubt.
Today, your entire belief system has been upended. The benevolent god you still weren’t totally sure you believed in has now been replaced by a pantheon of monstrous beings who see humans as either pawns in an inscrutable plan to spread madness and evil, fodder for their endless hunger, or a stain to be blotted out.
Question #3 asked you, “Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one from your own design.” You wrote on life lessons learned while playing foosball, an essay waxing rhapsodic on the difficulty in learning when to play defense and when to shift to offense in life’s everyday battles.
Today, were you to write that essay all over again, it would have been on the topic, “The Outer Gods are here and we’re all going to DIE DIE DIE.”
Today’s prompt: “Google search your own name. Write about the search result that is the closest to your name but isn’t you.”
Well, I wasn’t real sure of your name spelling, so I just googled “latest victim of cult murder.” And of the top four results, the ones I could see without scrolling down, two of them were about the Manson Family and one was about Jonestown. I guess it’s what you’d expect. It seems word about the slaughter you were caught up in hasn’t made it out into the broader world yet.
But that fourth result? It’s a Daily Beast article headlined “German Crossbow Victims Were Part of Medieval Sex Cult.” Man, talk about your clickbait.
Click.
Okay, so I’m honestly a bit disappointed that this sex cult didn’t actually take place in the Middle Ages. The murders in question, apparently a murder-suicide kind of thing, took place in May this year. Sounds like there was some group BDSM stuff involving a guy who owned a shop that sold replicas of medieval weapons and offered reenactment events and jousting classes. Probably other goods as well; the store is described in the article as a “medieval fetish shop,” and the lede has a lurid description of a mannequin in the window covered with chains and fake blood. According to the second paragraph, the guy also used to have a dog that bit other dogs to death, which, ugh. Police think he told the apparent assailant to kill him and the other victim and then herself, with a crossbow.
Anyway. Your death involved a lot less sex, but about the same number of crossbow bolts.
Today’s prompt: “Write down three pieces of dialogue that you hear from three different conversations. Put those bits into the same conversation. Take it from there.”
Animals aren’t supposed to die in movies.1 They’re not supposed to die in stories. That’s how you know you’re in the darkest timeline.
A gregarious cultist in a hooded black robe rubs his hands together gleefully as two women in robes finish lighting candles around the circle. “I can see all the mice are here. Where’s the big cheese?”2
Sure, Old Yeller, or Where the Red Fern Grows. But other than that, they’re supposed to live.
One of the women lighting the candles rolls her eyes. “His holiness should be here any minute, Greg.”
You clack your hooves on the floor nervously.
“Cool, cool. Nice work on those candles, Bethany. So where’re we going after? Applebees? Everybody good with Applebees?”
You take in the whole scene. It’s a basement. Concrete floor. Fading light coming in from the ground-level windows, but there’s no reaching those, and the doors are all fast shut. Five cultists in robes, including the one holding the leash around your neck. A circle of candles around a symbol painted with yellow curlicues. Lots of sharp knives. Things look bad.
A few people mumble that sure, Applebees sounds all right. But one man speaks up. “How late are they open? Aren’t we going to have to deal with cleanup first?”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised how much blood there is in a goat,” Bethany says.
“Maaa-aaa-aa-aaa,” you say.
“I think they’re open pretty late. Besides, if the summoning succeeds, Cthulhu’s coming and the world’s gonna end. So why bother with cleanup?” Greg says.
“If the summoning succeeds and Cthulhu comes, are we even going to have time to go to Applebees?” the other man says.
You stamp the floor with your hooves.
Greg shrugs. “Who knows, Rick? The Old Ones are mysterio–”
The door opens and a sixth robed figure appears silhouetted in the door frame, holding a massive book. He strides into the room and the metal door swings shut with a clang. You back up, your hooves clattering on the floor.
The tall, stoutly built woman holding your leash pulls you into the center of the circle. She’s far too strong for you to resist. You dodge to the left and nearly knock over a candle as you pass the edge of the circle, but Bethany quickly catches it.
The other four take their places around the circle. With no idle chitchat, the big cheese opens his book and starts speaking.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” he says.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” the others repeat.
“We summon you, great Cthulhu,” the big cheese says.
“We summon you, great Cthulhu,” the others reply.
The call and responds ends abruptly, and the big cheese starts reading aloud from his tome in a language that doesn’t sound anything like English. Eventually, he ceases reading and stretches out his hand to Bethany, who hands him one of the knives. He gestures to the woman holding your leash, and she pulls you closer to him.
There’s an almost electric hum in the air as the big cheese holds the knife up to your throat. And then he slides the blade across it. Blood pools below the cut. This is it. They’re killing you, an animal. Sacrificing you. To summon an Old One to destroy the earth. It’s the darkest timeline.
The big cheese thrusts his hand out toward Greg. Greg sticks his hands in his pockets. A panicked expression spreads across his face.
The big cheese stares at Greg. “The rings?” he says. “It’s that part of the ritual. The timing is crucial.”
“I realized I left the rings at home,”3 Greg says.
A look of disappointment clouds the big cheese’s face. All the cultists stare at Greg, before turning their gazes to you to watch your blood pool on the floor. There’s a lot of it.
“Shit,” Bethany says. “We’re gonna have to get another goat.”
“We’re never gonna get to go to Applebees,” Rick says plaintively.
Today’s prompt: “One day a young boy climbs a tree and decides he won’t come down until his parents stop their divorce proceedings. Write about the event from the point of view of each parent.”
Of course Josh doesn’t want this to happen, you think. We’re still his family, in spite of everything that’s happened. We’re the only parents he’s ever known. Connor can call you a monster all he wants, but that won’t change. Josh must feel so afraid. His parents are breaking up, and what can he do? He tried the one thing he could think of. He climbed away from his problems, and he issued an ultimatum.
Josh is crazy good at climbing. You’re not sure how he managed to get to such a high branch. Neither is Connor. “Great,” he grumbles, “now we’re going to have to call the fire department.”
“That won’t be necessary,” you tell Connor. You take your snake form and coil around the tree. Loop by loop, you inch upwards, until you reach Josh’s branch. You unspool from the tree trunk and nestle across Josh’s shoulders in the anaconda version of a bear hug, and feel your sobbing son rest his head on your neck.
“Don’t you fucking do it,” Connor shouts from below. “That’s my son. Don’t you dare fucking … constrict him to death.”
You find a stable position on the branch and revert to human form. “For Chrissakes, Connor, that was a love squeeze. I’m sorry you haven’t figured out the difference yet, but Josh knows. He knows I love him in all of my forms.”
You look at Josh and put your arm around him. “Are you okay?” He nods and sniffles. “Are you ready to come down?” He shakes his head.
You sit with Josh for a minute, watching Connor fume below you. You hid your other forms from Connor for so long. A part of you always knew he’d react like this. That this relationship was always doomed. Of course, you didn’t think you’d want to stick around for so long. But then you had Josh.
You didn’t hide anything from Josh. Even as a toddler, whenever Connor went to work, you’d change into your other forms – the snake, the bat, and the beast. You wanted to see if he took after you, if he would transform when you showed him how, but he never has. It seems he’s entirely human. But your transformations were something you could share with him. He loved your bat form. He was mesmerized by the way you would flap around the ceiling on leathery wings. His grubby toddler hands would pet your scaly smooth snakeskin. But his favorite was cuddling your furry beast self. He’d bury his face in the thick fur of your chest as you rocked him. He was never afraid of any of your forms. He always knew you were mommy.
“I’d better go down,” you say to Josh. “I’ll check on you in a few minutes. See if you’re ready to come down.”
“Okay,” he says. You curl your way down the tree and shift to human once more. Connor gives you a look of disgust, turns, and walks into the house.
You can see him through the window pacing in the kitchen. He’s on his phone. Probably talking to his attorney. He’s glowering at you.
You knew you should either break up with Connor or tell him who you are, but then you got pregnant. You knew you should tell him who you were before you got married, but somehow the time was never right. And then lie after lie built up over time. It was pretty easy to cover for Josh’s little outbursts of “beast, mommy!” when Connor was home. You’d just stay in human form and curl up your fingers like claws and growl. And you knew the day would come when Connor would find out, but that didn’t make it hurt any less when he finally came home early from work one day and caught you in beast mode.
At this point, Connor knows everything. He knows all your forms, and he knows Josh is completely normal. He knows you were transforming from the age of two months, and he knows Josh has never so much as flickered from his human form in seven years. And he knows – you’ve told him many times – that you’re not some malevolent creature, some bloodthirsty monster, some harbinger of doom. He knows everything. He just doesn’t trust anything.
You go inside to pack up the additional things you’d planned to take today. You check on Josh a bit later.
“You can’t stay up there forever, you know,” you say to Josh as sweetly as you can.
“I want you and dad to stop fighting,” he says.
“I know honey. I’m trying,” you say.
“I want you to stay together,” he says.
“I know, Josh. I understand. I know this divorce hurts you. But I just don’t think us staying together is an option.”
“I’m staying up here,” he says.
“What happens when you get hungry?”
“I’m not coming down for supper.”
You shrug. “All right. Suit yourself.”
You go in and finish packing. It’s now dinnertime. Josh is still in the tree. You make him a sandwich and take it outside.
“I cut the crusts off,” you call up to Josh.
“I’m not coming down,” he says.
You sigh. “Fine,” you say. Snake mode and bat mode won’t work to take the sandwich up. You balance the sandwich on your left palm as you transform, your fingernails thickening and lengthening into dark bonelike claws, coarse black fur sprouting from every surface, your physique growing taller and stouter, more muscular. Your mandible stretches and large lower teeth jut out in a nasty underbite. A gradually tapering tail unfurls on the ground, and low rows of spines jut out of your eyebrow ridge and cheekbones. You bury the claws of your right hand into the tree trunk, followed by those on your left toes, about a foot above the ground. “I’ll bring it up.”
“I swear to god, Chuck, this is impossible. I don’t know when she’s going to snap and kill someone or destroy something. Today she turned into a boa constrictor and crawled up a tree Josh had climbed up, and then she started squeezing the life out of him. She only stopped when I yelled at her. And then she was all like, ‘it was a love squeeze!’”
“That’s some bullshit,” Chuck says over the phone. “But hey, I looked into it, and from the three forms you told me about – snake, bat, seven-foot furry monster with spikes on the face and a big tail – it sounds like you’re dealing with a Lethra demon.”
“Great,” Connor says. “What are their weaknesses?”
“You can kill them by decapitating them. Honestly, you can kill most demons by decapitating them.”
“I’ve got an axe in the garage. I think that’ll do it.”
“Good luck, man. I can’t think of anything scarier than having your wife suddenly turn out to be a demon.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s Josh.”
“Obviously. Seriously, good luck.”
Connor retrieves the axe from the garage and runs out the back door just as you’re starting your ascent of the tree. “Don’t be afraid, Josh,” he calls out. “It’s going to be okay. Just close your eyes.”
Today’s prompt: “The way the sky looks today”
Red. And kind of gurgly?
Oh, that’s right. You’re in the belly of an eldritch god.