11 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “I didn’t know what was happening at the time.”
You honestly thought it was going to be a cheesy night of Ouija boards and tarot cards and everybody holding hands in a séance while the so-called medium uses a parlor trick to bump the table. But with, like, cocktails. Kind of a grown-up version of playing “Bloody Mary.”
So when the demon Astaroth appears in the summoning circle, you’re already reaching inside the circle, where you left your margarita. That, unfortunately, leaves you vulnerable to being pulled into the circle and having your entire chest cavity ripped apart.
Now you’re light as a feather, stiff as a board.
10 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “Write a review of a novel or memoir you’ve never written.”
[Insert-your-name-here]’s posthumously published memoir “A Reason for Hope” is suffused with naïveté, both in its unsophisticated writing style and in the trusting nature the author displays in every single life choice.
The book is almost charming in its doe-eyed simplicity and optimistic outlook, but it is impossible to ignore our knowledge of what happened to the author after these words were written. It’s jarring to see [insert-your-last-name-here] describe Matthew Parker as “one of the most charming individuals I’ve ever met, with a wry sense of humor and a kind word for everyone.” Were this propaganda by the Church of Dagon, it would be downright offensive, but here, it’s just tragic. Parker is now synonymous worldwide with authoritarianism, the occult and wholesale slaughter, largely because [insert-your-last-name-here] and the other 26 people massacred in Eugene were blind to the warning signs.
Likewise, the reader is abruptly jolted out the narrative in the second chapter, where [insert-your-last-name-here] has written a meet-cute scene with – wait for it – Alex Wittington. Wittington, who is now a top tier member in the Church of Dagon’s org chart. The whole story of their relationship is an object lesson in not ignoring the red flags in your partner, whether it be mild emotional abuse or cult membership. The reader is left to wonder, could I ever be this naïve? Could I fall into the same traps?
Reading this book felt like watching a cliché horror film. You want to scream out to the characters, “Don’t go into the basement! Don’t trust them!” It never does any good, and it’s ultimately frustrating to watch their foolishness.
The book ends with [insert-your-last-name-here] staring out a plane window on the way to Eugene, Oregon, to meet their lover. The book’s publisher has already stated that this last scene was written before it occurred; the author had made plans to fly out to Wittington and included the imagined flight in the last few pages of the manuscript before sending it off to the publisher and heading to the airport.
“White clouds surround the plane, but all I can see is Alex’s smile,” [insert-your-last-name-here] writes. “I have a hope that lives in my heart, and a reason for hope, waiting for me in Eugene.”
There, but for the grace of God….
09 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “The difference between the first death you remember and the most recent one”
The most obvious difference between the death of your guinea pig, Howard, and your own death is that you’re experiencing the latter firsthand. But there were other differences. Howard went peacefully, in his sleep. You died violently, at the hands of someone you thought you could trust. Did the betrayal sting as much as the knife they put in your chest? That’s not for me to say. I’m just saying, you probably envy poor little Howard right now.
08 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “The time you were the most terrified – your knees were knocking, your heart was racing, you could barely stand to be in your own skin”
You like to think of yourself as a connoisseur of fear. You’re above those silly jump scares, like where a cat jumps out at you and then turns into an incarnation of Cyäegha. Gore doesn’t really do it for you anymore, either; buckets of blood, and entrails spilling from bodies, and people with their lips sewn together with strands of their own hair, they all just get kind of stale after a while. You figured the only way you could really taste true fear, that white-hot fear that gnaws its way inside of you and ties your intestines into knots, is to stare into the eyes of the Great Old Ones themselves.
Hence the expedition. You decided to start out with some of the Old Ones that you thought, based on the tales, might be the least madness-inducing, figuring that you could get as many scares in as possible before your mind went. So you started with some of the, let’s face it, sillier-sounding gods. First, Basatan, who, yes, is indeed a giant crab. You wanted to get in closer, but the captain of your ship refused. Basatan’s enormous claws, each the size of schooners, went clackity-clack-clack, and there was a definite goofiness to the whole thing, until you stared into its massive eyestalks. Because there, you could see, the whole was truly more than the sum of its giant crab parts. Those deep black eyes contained whorls of – of a something that triggered your insides to upend themselves. It was like each of your internal organs was fighting to get out. The members of the crew that hadn’t turned away were screaming and throwing themselves overboard. But you just stared slackjawed in the face of that magnificent horror.
From that point on, you were hooked. Next stop was Chaugnar Faugn, the vampiric elephantine humanoid with a mouth on the end of its trunk. Hilarious! Until you saw those eyes. Just looking into those dull yellow eyes felt like walking through an endless hallway echoing with screams.
Then you went to see Glaaki. Glaaki is a giant three-eyed slug with metallic spines. You don’t even know how he walks because his tiny, tiny feet are shaped like pyramids. You kept wanting to giggle until you looked into those three eyes, each of which spelled out to you in perfect grammar and pristine handwriting exactly what it feels like to die alone and unloved.
You weren’t sure which embodiment of Golgoroth you’d get, the giant black toad or the scaly, bat-winged, betentacled thing. You lucked out. It was the toad, which has been rumored to have an “impossibly malevolent glare.” Its eyes spoke a hatred of you and all your ancestors back to the great apes, a hatred of every aspect of you from your weird human toenails to the way you think you’re funnier than you are, a hatred of you that would roll over you and crush you. You shivered, despite all you’d seen.
You of course checked out a few of the Outer Gods and all the classics, your Cthulhus, your Nyarlathoteps, your Shubs-Niggurath. But honestly, you found that the sillier-sounding the entity, the more hidden depths of horror it contained. The highlight was probably when you went on safari to see Baoht Z’uqqa-Mogg. Baoht has an ant head atop a massive flying scorpion body. Looking in its eyes felt like an endless cycle of falling dreams – falling, then being startled awake, then going back to sleep, then falling again. Looking in its eyes felt like insects were crawling under your skin. Horror vibrated through your body like a washing machine with an unbalanced load.
It was inevitable that you were devoured. You were eaten by the reclusive Ctoggha, as it happens. Your guidebook to the Old Ones didn’t even have a description of Ctoggha, so you wanted to take a real good look. It had a series of undulating … beaks? You didn’t think beaks could undulate. It had eyes growing out of its neck and hands growing out of its stomach. It did things with geometry that would have made Euclid and Pythagoras want to crawl into a cardboard box at the top of a tall staircase and then roll down in it until the box wasn’t cube-shaped anymore. But those eyes … those creepy, creepy neck-eyes…. Staring into them left you with the feeling of powder from the wings of a moth dusting your cheek. But the feeling built and layered upward – fingernails on a chalkboard, then a cold breath on your neck, then a sudden conviction that you left the stove on, each sensation building up like a movement in a symphony, until it felt like you were simultaneously wading through rivers of blood, losing your best friend, being watched by a thousand eyes, turning into your parents, and cutting open and sewing shut each of your arms.
Sure, you died, but the things you’ve seen … no one can say you didn’t live.
07 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “Describe exultation”
You know how the NFL sometimes penalizes teams or fines players for excessive celebration after an end zone dance? Yeah, apparently Yog-Sothoth doesn’t really mind its followers Ickey Shuffling and Funky Chickening and Hingle McCringleberrying all over the place. You should have seen the Chorazos Cult after they murdered you! Dabbing and Cabbage Patching and Popping and Locking and Moonwalking and Whipping and Nae Naeing and Dougieing and Running Manning. They got serious moves!
06 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “Your most transcendent ice cream experience”
I mean, you did literally transcend human flesh when a ravenous Cthulhu attacked the line outside of Ben and Jerry’s on Free Cone Day. At least you’d just been through the line and you could have a bite of your Chocolate Fudge Brownie scoop before you joined Wavy Gravy in the Flavor Graveyard.
05 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “The thoughts of the first man to eat an oyster”
His or her first thought was probably, “Oh hey, there’s meat in there,” probably followed by “slimy,” “chewy,” “tasty,” possibly even “succulent,” and finally “more.”
In other words, the exact thoughts of the elder god eating your entrails.