Weekly Prompt Story: Endless

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=31964

The Endless Ones

By Christopher Munroe

The Endless Ones slumber beneath the city

Unthinkably huge, eternally old and horrifying beyond all imagination, simply to view them is to go mad from revelations no mortal man was ever meant to know. Surely upon waking they could destroy us, one and all, obliterating our city and all who dwell within it without so much as a thought.

For such is their power, their horrible majesty, that we are but gnats upon their surface.

Fortunately for us, here on the surface, their sleep is, like they themselves are, endless.

So yeah, we’re good. We ought to all be fine…

The Slumbering One

Long have I slumbered(1) beneath this city’s streets.(2)

I’ve slept what seems an eternity,(3) time beyond measure,(4) since the ancient ones(5) banished me, and in moments it feels as though I should never awaken.(6)

But I shall.(7)

I shall awaken, and when I do I will devour all(8) that lay before me(9) on my way to do my horrible business,(10) business I dare not even mention.(11)

All shall fear me,(12) upon that hour.(13) And none among them shall survive.(14) And truly, this end will please me greatly.(15)

I am an unstoppable thing, unpreventable in my coming,(16) as though I were the sea itself,(17) or the uncaring sky above,(18) or the blind, mad God who’s long since turned his uncaring face away from this pitiful world, ashamed and afraid to look upon it.(19)

But I am here. I am here,(20) in this world,(21) and the hour of my waking draws near.(22) Do not dare attempt to put this moment off,(23) for it is coming and soon it(24) will be nigh….

For so it has been written.(25)

And thus so shall it be.(26)

(1)Probably something like nine or ten hours. Way more sleep than my usual.

(2)I live in a basement apartment.

(3)It was not an eternity, obviously. but it seems like it was, due to time passing weirdly when you’re dreaming. Have you ever had that? Where you’re convinced a dream goes on for years and years? It was like that.

(4)The time COULD be measured, obviously, it just hasn’t been yet.

(5)An eighteen year-old Scotch I’d bought myself as a post-mother’s day present.

(6)In hindsight I should not have had as much of the Scotch as I did.

(7)I have no choice in the matter, I have things today that need to get done.

(8)Breakfast Food

(9)Probably something quick. Toast or some such. Maybe a PB&J sandwich. I’m almost certainly going to be running late and I’ve never been much of a breakfast person anyway.

(10)My Day Job.

(11)My day job is very boring, I’ll spare you the details.

(12)I am by no one’s estimation a morning person, and this plus my hangover means I will almost certainly be arriving at work in a foul mood.

(13)But after an hour, maybe two, with a lot of water for hydration and a few cups of coffee to wake me up, hopefully my mood will improve.

(14)Myself included. Death is, barring one or two exceptions depending on your religion, inevitable to us all.

(15)After all, life’s finite nature is what makes the things we do during ours meaningful. Death is always a painful moment, but it’s a necessary one, and I understand this as well as anyone.

(16)I could probably be prevented from going to work, but I don’t see any reason why anyone would bother.

(17)Insomuch as I am mostly made of water.

(18)Insomuch as the atoms of my body were forged in the same big bang as the stars.

(19)We have displeased our creator, and It has grown over time to resent us more and more for our arrogance, our inability or unwillingness to steward its creation, the lack of respect we’ve shown It through the lack of respect we’ve shown one another. It has abandoned us, and let us pray It never turns Its face back toward our pitiful little world, for should It do so Its wrath will be a terrible thing indeed, and surely all that we’ve squandered our squallid little lives valuing will in a heartbeat be reduced to nothing but ash, with none even to remember we were ever here...

(20)My basement apartment.

(21)A world that lurches toward its fate at the hands of a blind, mad God.

(22)I really do need to get out of bed at some point.

(23)I may be late for work already.

(24)My scheduled shift at work.

(25)I literally just finished writing it.

(26)Much like the end of all things, at the hands of a blind, mad God who’s grown to hate its creation…

The Awakening of the Middle-Aged One

Beneath city streets I slumber, in my basement apartment, as I have done since before the time of dawn.

Dreaming mad dreams of limitless, unchecked power, I await that moment when the time is right, when the portents are properly aligned, and when my alarm goes off, at which point shall I arise and unleash myself upon this helpless, unsuspecting world.

And when I do awaken, truly all will cower before me, unified in horror at the spectacle so cruelly thrust before their disbelieving eyes.

Because I do not wake up in a good mood.

And I demand my coffee…

Lovecraft

Each episode, the ship sailed into port, picked up an assortment of celebrity guests, and took off on another romantic voyage.

However, once at sea, things would inevitably go awry. Horribly awry. Lives would be threatened, indeed lost tragically, passengers would be driven mad and, in the end, no matter how they might try to survive, they would each and all be devoured by the eldritch God-Beasts of old.

And as they were consumed, body and soul, the captain would sing his mad, haunted refrain, also used as the program’s theme...

Lovecraft, exciting and new.

Ancient Gods will devour you…

#HeIsRisen

I learned about it, as I learn most news nowadays,  via Twitter. Though at first I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.

The hashtag #HeIsRisen doesn’t give away a lot of information, after all. And when I did a search to see how it was being used, everyone seemed to studiously avoid giving anything away.

Some of the tweets, many of the tweets, were merest gibberish, not even words, as though everything but the hashtag had simply been typed at random. Others, though made up of English words, put them in no order as to even remotely resemble a sentence.

And what few sentences there were only cast more doubt as to what #HeIsRisen might mean.

“All mankind shall tremble as one before him #HeIsRisen”

“His eons sleep, over. Finally he awakens, to break his horrible fast #HeIsRisen”

“We who yet live, we are the truly damned #HeIsRisen”

Interesting, to be sure, but still no clue was given as to who “He” was, or what he’d risen from. Still, as the day progressed and I went about my business, I couldn’t help noticing as more and more of the people I follow succumbed to the ‘tag. They’d use the phrase, and the quality of their tweets would immediately descend into the depths of the unreadable.

Or at least the unfollowable.

It felt as though there were some game going on, some inside joke that I happened to be outside of. But were that the case, surely somebody on my Twitter would’ve responded to my direct messages with answers. Most of the people I follow are pretty cool, after all, and they’re generally happy to answer questions if I ask.

But no, there was nothing. Neither response to messages, nor any clue to be gleaned from the increasingly incoherent tweets rocketing back and forth regarding #HeIsRisen.

Which was distressing. If people were tweeting something fun I wanted to participate! Or at the very least, to get the joke. But there was nothing to be done about it until I got home from my grocery shopping and could Google the phrase. Hopefully that would provide a little more detail than Twitter seemed willing to.

The search was, apparently, a popular one, because the very first result was a YouTube video, titled “#HeIsRisen: Real Footage of his Rise” and then descending into the same sort of delirious raving I’d grown, from Twitter, to expect with regard to this hashtag in lieu of a description.

Finally, the answers I sought were available to me! Firsthand footage of whatever it was the mystery ‘tag referred to, available at the click of a link! I knew, once I got home and was no longer struggling through the internet via blackberry, that I’d be able to look it up easily enough, and the internet didn’t let me down.

Why would it? Everyone has a video camera nowadays, and so it’s a matter of merest seconds between event and video, plastered across YouTube, linked across Twitter, spread to the world. I lived in an age in which more information was at my fingertips than any generation in human history had access to, and if I wanted information about why people were excited, yet unwilling to describe, #HeIsRisen, it would take me seconds, not minutes, to find it.

And so, I clicked the link.

God have mercy on us all, I clicked that forsaken link.

I can feel my mind abandoning me, even now, the vision of that gibbous, tentacled thing emerging from beneath the sea and taking it’s first, slouching steps up onto land was too much for any mind to bear, don’t you see?

Madness was the only possible result of the hideous scene I witnessed, but I must hold my splintering sanity together. I must. For a few moments more, at the very least.

For this is a momentous occasion. He is risen. Truly, he is.

And I need to Tweet about it…